Optical Photometry of BY Cam Modeled Using a Multipolar Magnetic Field Structure

We present new high-speed broad-band optical photometry of the asynchronous polar (magnetic cataclysmic variable) BY Cam. Observations were obtained at the 2.1-m Otto Struve Telescope of McDonald Observatory with 3s integration times. In an attempt to understand the observed complex changes in accretion flow geometry, we performed full 3D MHD simulations assuming a variety of white dwarf magnetic field structures including both aligned and non-aligned dipole plus quadrupole field components. We compare model predictions with photometry and various phases of the beat cycle and find that synthetic light curves derived from a multipolar field structure are consistent with the optical photometry.