1998BaltA...7..255S

We present preliminary results from a three-dimensional smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) simulation of an accretion disk in a low mass-ratio cataclysmic variable system representative of the SU UMa and AM CVn subclasses of dwarf novae. Using a simple ray-tracing scheme to identify ``surface'' particles as a function of viewing angle, we use the relative temperature distribution of these particles to estimate the particles' luminosities at a given timestep by convolving blackbody energy distributions with UBVRI filter response functions. These values are then corrected for limb-darkening and summed to produce pseudo-lightcurves and Fourier amplitude spectra which may be directly compared with observations. We find that the resulting amplitude spectra for inclination angles i≲45° are dominated by the superhump frequency, but that linear combination frequencies of the superhump and orbital periods begin to dominate the amplitude spectrum for systems with higher inclination angles. These preliminary calculations suggest that the observed harmonic structure of superhump light curves may provide independent constraints on SU UMa and AM CVn system inclinations.