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| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Preprint |
| Published: |
2026
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.18300 |
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Table of Contents:
- The geometry and morphology of symbiotic stars are conducive to exhibit a variety of scattering phenomena. The prominent among them is the Raman scattering of O VI doublet $λλ$ 1032,1038 angstrom, which often show strongly polarized features in the visible spectrum. Similar Raman scattering of Ly$β$ photons has also been predicted to occur in symbiotic stars, though with fewer detections and with weak polarization amplitudes. Here, we present the discovery of strong variable polarization in the H$α$ profile of a recently established symbiotic system Y Gem, over a period of nearly 22 months. This is, most likely, a very rare detection of the strongly polarized Raman scattered Ly$β$ photons, falling at the H$α$ emission. Monte-Carlo simulations have been conducted to confirm the underlying Raman scattering process causing the polarized line profile, and a simple orbital model is constructed with typical parameters available in the recent literature along with a complementary low-resolution spectroscopic data. These simulations and models are then used to validate the observed polarization variation of H$α$ at different orbital phases corresponding to the epochs of observations. The possibility of such strong variable H$α$ polarization, being caused by Raman scattering of Ly$β$, would thus open up avenues of exploring such effects in various other astrophysical situations having similar morphology.