Emission Line Flickering in Cataclysmic Variables

Left: Doppler tomogram of the Ha flickering variance (sigma²) with 200 km/s (FWHM) resolution. Contour lines are linearly spaced from 0.0. Right: The fractional flickering (sigma divided by the emission). Contours levels are also linear from 0 and spaced by 0.12. In both images the pluses represent, from top to bottom, the secondary, the inner Lagrangian point, the center of mass and the white dwarf. Both the stream path and stellar positions were computed using arbitrary mass values M₁ = 0.6 M_sun and M₂ = 0.2 M_sun. The maps follow the usual definition: the V_X-axis points from the primary to the secondary while the V_Y-axis points in the direction of the companion orbital motion.

Intrinsic velocity distributions of flickering obtained from the Doppler reconstruction. The dots (left y-axis scale) represent the s values for the Ha flickering component in absolute flux units. The pluses (right y-axis scale) display the relative intensity of the flickering (sigma) normalized by the emission itself.