Coronal Element Abundances of the Post–Common‐Envelope Binary V471 Tauri withASCA

We report on ASCA observations of the coronally active companion star in thepost-common envelope binary V471 Tauri. Evolutionary calculations indicate thatthere should be no peculiar abundances on the companion star resulting from thecommon envelope epoch. Indeed, we find no evidence for peculiar abundances,although uncertainties are high. We find that a single-temperature plasma modeldoes not fit the data. Two-temperature models with decoupled elementalabundances suggest that Fe is underabundant compared to the Hyades photosphericmean. In the absence of a measurement of photospheric Ne abundance in thecluster, we find Ne is overabundant compared to the solar photospheric value.This is indicative of the inverse first ionization potential effect.Differences between coronal and photospheric abundances are believed to resultfrom the fractionation of ionized and neutral material in the upper atmosphereof the star.Comment: 11 pages, 4 figures, ApJ in pres