Hydrogen shell flashes in massive accreting white dwarfs.

In the present paper, the long-term evolution of massive accreting white dwarfs in close binary systems is discussed in context of several astrophysical problems. It is shown that high surface luminosity models with spherically symmetric accretion (rather than disk accretion) yield very short interflash periods for massive white dwarfs accreting at high rates. The shell flashes exhibited by the models are not strong enough to eject mass, as in classical novae. However, the repetitive hydrogen shell flashes with an interflash period of 17 years may be relevant to understanding the underlying variability of the blue component of symbiotic variables if the blue component is a white dwarf.