VW Hyi: optical spectroscopy and Doppler tomography

We present high-quality optical spectroscopy of the SU UMa-subtype dwarf nova, VW Hyi taken while the system was in quiescence. An S-wave is executed by the emission cores of the hydrogen Balmer lines and by the emission lines of He i, Ca ii, Fe ii and He ii. Using Doppler tomography, we show it originates in the accretion stream–disc impact region. The He ii emission is strongly phase-dependent, suggesting it originates exclusively within a hot cavity at the initial impact. We map the ionization structure of the stream–disc interaction region. One possible interpretation of this is that the Balmer hotspot lies downstream of the He ii hotspot in the outer accretion disc, with the He i and Ca ii hotspots at intermediate locations between the two. This suggests that Balmer emission is suppressed until material has cooled somewhat downstream of the impact site and is able to recombine. We favour a phase offset of 0.15 ± 0.04 between the photometric ephemeris and inferior conjunction of the mass donor. The white dwarf contributes significantly to the optical continuum, with broad Balmer absorption and narrow Mg ii λ4481 absorption clearly apparent. This latter feature yields the gravitational redshift: vgrav = 38 ± 21 km s −1, so M1 = 0.71+0.18−0.26 M. This implies M2 = 0.11 ± 0.03 M and hence the donor is not a brown dwarf. A prominent Balmer jump is also observed. We note that the previously accepted system parameters for both VW Hyi and WX Hyi incorporate an algebraic error, and we provide a recalculated M1(q) plane for WX Hyi