Jets from Accreting White Dwarfs

Of the three major classes of accreting white dwarfs -- cataclysmic variable stars, supersoft X-ray sources, and symbiotic stars -- both supersoft sources and symbiotics have members that produce collimated outflows, or jets. More than 14 symbiotics have shown some evidence for collimated outflows, which are typically identified by either the presence of extended radio emission or narrow blue- and red-shifted components to optical emission lines. Inferred outflow velocities range from hundreds to thousands of km/s. Since at least half of the observed jets from symbiotic stars have been transient, many jets have also probably gone undetected, and the actual fraction of these interacting binaries that produce collimated outflows could be much higher than the currently known 5%. I describe recent results on the discovery of a transient radio jet in the prototypical symbiotic star Z And, and optical evidence for a disk-jet connection in the well-known jet source CH Cyg. I also review Chandra observations by Kellogg et al. of the only symbiotic-star X-ray jet so far: R Aqr. I conclude by touching on implications of these observations and describing our multi-wavelength observational program to find and investigate additional symbiotic-star jet sources.

Last modified: Mon Dec 19 13:16:10 EST 2005