Schematic view of the two-pole accreting WD. The big black circles show the photosphere of the WD. (a) Side view of the WD. The red line represents the orbital plane. The dashed blue line shows the observer’s line of sight. The magnetic accretion regions B1 (primary) and B2 (secondary) are almost diametrically opposed. (b) Top view, projection onto the orbital plane. ϕ_phot indicates photometric phase zero (center of the main hump). The phase is counted clockwise. ϕ₁, and ϕ₂, respectively represent the longitude range where the first and second column can be found on the WD surface in the XMM-Newton observations. The blue line indicates the phase ϕ_dip of the X-ray absorption dip.