Abstract

Poster - Splinter CloseBinaries   (MW-0250)

Population study of Accreting White Dwarfs in M33 based on X-ray emission

Lars Chrischilles, Sara Saeedi, Manami Sasaki
Dr. Karl Remeis-Observatory, Erlangen Centre for Astroparticle Physics, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg

A common population of stellar endpoints in galaxies are accreting white dwarfs (AWDs). This accretion of mass from another star onto the AWD causes outbursts known as novae. They are detected as a bright transient source in the optical. For systems with a massive AWD, there is an initial short, bright and luminous flash in X-rays. After the optical maximum, the hotter layers of the burning hydrogen become detectable and the spectral peak shifts to soft X-rays. In the nearby M33 galaxy, a population of novae hosting massive AWDs have been found in optical surveys. M33 has also been observed entirely in X-rays, however, a dedicated study of the population of accreting white dwarfs is still missing. In this ongoing Master Thesis project, we perform such a study on M33 based on XMM-Newton data. We focus on compact objects and try to identify AWDs via catalog matching and hardness-ratio considerations. Characteristics of single AWDs can potentially be worked out. This poster gives an overview of the data processing and the results of this population study.