HE0241-0155 - Evidence for a large scale homogeneous field in a highly magnetic white dwarf

Abstract

In the course of the Hamburg/ESO survey we have discovered a white dwarf whose spectrum exhibits many similarities with the prototype of magnetic white dwarfs Grw+70$^{\circ}$8247. In particular several stationary line components indicative for magnetic fields between about 150 and 400 MG are found in both objects. However, the features between 5000 and 5500 Åin the spectrum of HE0241-0155 cannot be explained by stationary line components and demand a relatively homogeneous magnetic field with clustering around 200 MG. For this reason a pure dipole model failed to reproduce this spectral region.An offset-dipole configuration led to some improvement in the fit but a good agreement was only possible for a geometry -- described by an expansion into spherical harmonics -- where most of the surface is covered with magnetic field strengths strongly clustered around 200 MG. This may indicate the presence of a large magnetic spot whose presence could be tested with time resolved spectro-polarimetry.