If an accretion disk remains thin near the point where it reaches the white
dwarf surface, accreted material will first reach the stellar surface at the
equator. This material must slow its orbit as it comes into co-rotation with
the white dwarf, dissipating kinetic energy into thermal energy and creating
a hot band of freshly accreted material around the equator. I will present a
set of solutions which describe the properties of this hot belt (based on the
work by Inogamov & Sunyaev 1999 for accreting neutron stars). I find that at
low accretion rates the amount of spreading is negligible and most of the
dissipated energy is radiated back into the accretion disk. When the accretion
rate is high, such as in a dwarf nova outburst or symbiotic binary, the
material may spread high enough to be seen above the accretion disk.
This study opens up a new area of investigation for accreting systems,
including being a new source for spectral modeling and nonradial oscillations.
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