Jets from Accreting White Dwarfs

Abstract

Collimated outflows from accreting white dwarfs have an important role to play in the study of astrophysical jets. Observationally, collimated outflows are associated with systems in which material is accreted though a disk. Theoretically, accretion disks provide the foundation for many jet models. Perhaps the best-understood of all accretion disks are those in cataclysmic variable stars (CVs). Since the disks in other accreting white-dwarf (WD) binaries are probably similar to CV disks (at least to the extent that one does not expect complications such as, for example, advection-dominated flows), with WD accretors one has the advantage of a relatively good grasp of the region from which the outflows are likely to originate. We briefly compare the properties of the three main classes of WD accretors, two of which have members that produce jets, and review the cases of three specific jet-producing WD systems.