To test our hypothesis that the cloud is a result of the collision between a tidal stream and a stellar wind, we ran a numerical simulation using the hydrodynamics code VH-1 on a Cray T90 at the North Carolina State Supercomputing Center.

This image shows the stream being broken up by the Rayleigh-Taylor instability as the pressure of the stellar wind pushes the stream away from the blue star. The result is not one large cloud, but a region filled with many small clouds being blown radially away from the star. The dynamics of this collision are best seen in the movie created by our numerical simulation.
The time-averaged column density along the line of sight to the blue star is plotted as a function of orbital phase. This curve shows an extended region of enhancement centered on orbital phase 0.75. This differs from the observed UV light curve because it also includes lines of sight through the tidal stream at phase 0. This is not seen in the observations of AX Mon because the orbital system is inclined to our line of sight (there is no eclipse). Thus, for this stream/wind model to work, the vertical extent of the clumpy region must exceed 20 degrees off the orbital plane.