Analytic Approximation to the Bounce-average Drift Angle for Gyrosynchrotron-emitting Electrons in the Magnetosphere of V471 Tauri

Abstract

Numerical modelling (Nicholls & Storey 1999) suggests that the eclipse of a wedge of enhanced number density of mildly relativistic electrons is responsible for the variations in quiescent radio emission of the binary system V471 Tauri. In the model, the wedge of enhanced density is created by electrons accelerated in the interaction region of the magnetospheres of the two stars, which subsequently drift in azimuth while emitting gyrosynchrotron emission. We present here an analytic approximation to the opening angle of the wedge of enhanced density and show that it is consistent with the opening angle derived from numerical modelling for reasonable values of the input parameters.

The V471 Tauri System: A Multi-Data-Type Probe

“…Reasonable space limitations restrict our discussions to those most directly related to the putative third object's orbital properties, along with relative and absolute properties of the EB. Issues beyond the scope of this paper include radio eclipses (Lim et al 1996;Nicholls & Storey 1999), red dwarf atmospheric structure (Kim & Walter 1998;Walter 2004), chemical abundances (Martin et al 1997;Still & Hussain 2003;Garcia-Alvarez et al 2005;Shimansky et al 2011), a circumbinary shell (Sion et al 1989), red dwarf wind (Mullan et al 1989), and flares (Young et al 1983;Tunca et al 1993).…”