Precession of White Dwarfs in CVs

G. Tovmassian, S. Zharikov, V. Neustroev

Published 2011-11-10Version 1

Precession is observed routinely in solid bodies of Solar system and it has been invoked to explain number of phenomena observed in pulsars (i.e. Link 2003, Breton et al. 2008). White dwarfs also have been considered as possible candidates of precessing stellar objects. In slowly rotating compact stars, the precession period is extremely long and the amplitude of precession is small. However, in rapid rotating neutron stars and white dwarfs, the precession period is still within reasonable observational limits and can explain observed periodicities exceeding spin periods by several times.