Cool Stars 14 - Submitted Abstract # 53 This version created on 05 October 2006 Periodic accretion from a circumbinary disk in the young binary UZ Tauri E Saurav Dhital, Vanderbilt University, Swarthmore College Eric L. N. Jensen, Swarthmore College Keivan Stassun, Vanderbilt University Jenny Patience, Caltech Bill Herbst, Wesleyan University Fred Walter, State University of New York, Stony Brook Michal Simon, State University of New York, Stony Brook Gibor Basri, University of California, Berkeley Most close, young binary stars are surrounded by circumbinary disks. However, unlike single stars, the nature and extent of the flow of material from the circumbinary disk to the circumstellar system is not clear. Theoretical simulations predict that the gravitational perturbation of the stars causes the circumbinary material to accrete onto the circumstellar environment (Artymowicz & Lubow 1996), manifested as changes in brightness modulated at the binary orbital period. We report BVRI photometry over three years for a pre-main sequence spectroscopic binary UZ Tauri E. We find that the system's brightness is clearly periodic, with a best-fit period of 19.17 ± 0.05 days. This is consistent with the binary orbital period of 19.13 days, re-determined from analysis of new and existing radial velocity data. The system shows significant random variability, as seen in other T Tauri stars. There is also a general long-term increase in brightness. But the overall pattern is periodically recurring brightening events, spanning more than half an orbital period. These results are in accordance with theoretical predictions for binary systems similar to UZ Tau E. Along with the pulsed accretion seen in DQ Tau (Mathieu et al. 1997), our observations indicate that there is accretion from circumbinary disks, which would possibly increase the life of circumstellar disks and the timescale for planet formation. ----------------------------------