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The Spin-Up Rate of the White Dwarf of GK Per

Christopher W. Mauche

astro-pharXiv:astro-ph/0301582

Abstract

We use hard X-ray light curves measured by the Chandra HETG and RXTE PCA during the late rise and plateau phases of the 2002 March-April outburst of the intermediate polar GK Per to determine that its X-ray pulse period P = 351.332 +/- 0.002 s. Combined with previous X-ray and optical measurements of the spin period of the white dwarf, we find that its spin-up rate Pdot = 0.00027 +/- 0.00005 s/yr.

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