2019MNRAS.488.4526B

Magnetic cataclysmic variables are close binaries that consist of a compact object - a white dwarf - and a red dwarf filling its Roche lobe. Such systems are physical laboratories that enable study of the influence of magnetic fields on matter flows. They often exhibit spin-up or spin-down of the white dwarf, while some systems exhibit more complex behaviour of the spin period change. We monitor changes of the spin periods of white dwarfs in a sample of close binary systems to study interaction of the magnetic field and accretion processes as well as evolution of intermediate polars. Within the framework of our intermediate polar monitoring program, we obtained photometric CCD observations at several observatories. Two-period trigonometric polynomial fitting was used for determination of extrema timings. The (O-C) analysis was performed to study the variability of the orbital and spin periods of the systems. Using data taken during 9 yr of observations of the magnetic cataclysmic variable V2306 Cygni (formerly known as 1WGA J1958.2+3232), we detected the spin period variability that shows a spin-up of the white dwarf with a characteristic time of (53 ± 5) x 10⁴ yr. The value of the spin period was 733.33976 s with the formal accuracy of 0.00015 s. We derived an improved value of the orbital period of the system to be 4.371523 ± 0.000009 h.