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4 Emission-Line Profiles from the Unperturbed Disks

In this and subsequent sections we present the numerical results obtained by the method described in the previous section. We computed line profiles for disk sizes of 5, 10, and 20, density-gradient indices of 1, 2, 3, and 4, characteristic optical depths of , , and 10 and an optically thin case, and inclination angles of i = , , and . Note that observed H emission arises, on the average, in the range (Slettebak et al. 1992).

Here, we comment on the range of estimated for the disks of actual Be stars. For shell () stars, the optical depths of the envelopes are determined by the central depth analysis of the observed shell absorption lines (e.g., Kogure et al. 1978). Kogure (1990) collected the results obtained for some shell stars, and concluded that the optical depths in H lines range from 2000 to 5000 for fully-developed shell stars, while for weak shell stars. On the other hand, we can estimate for in our model as

 

Hence, we found that disks of the actual Be stars are characterized by .

Figure 3 shows the various line profiles from the unperturbed disks for . The left panels are for and the right panels for . The panels are for , , and 10 from top to bottom, respectively. In each panel we show profiles for four outer disk radii: 2, 5, 10, and 20. Each profile is normalized by the peak intensity of the unperturbed profile from the disk with , , and . Except for the line widths, the profiles for and are roughly the same as those shown in figure 3.

We now consider the effects of the density gradient index and the optical depth on the line profiles. As demonstrated by Horne and Marsh (1986), the intensities along the line-of-sights through the high-density region saturate in optically-thick cases. Hence, the area under the saturated line intensity increases with increasing characteristic optical depth . Simultaneously, the unsaturated intensities from an outer region of the disk increases with . As a result, the contribution of the outer region of the disk monotonically increases with .

On the other hand, the velocities of the violet and red peaks for are independent of , and are given by , while those for decrease towards as increases. This feature can be understood as follows: The emission in each velocity bin arises from a different crescent-shaped region of the disk surface [see figure 2 and also figure 1 of Horne and Marsh (1986)]. For , the strongest emission arises, irrespective of , from the crescent-shaped region tangent to the outer radius of the disk. For , however, it arises from the crescent-shaped region tangent to the radius where the optical depths along the line-of-sights are almost unity. This radius increases with increasing . Thus, for , the peak velocity is a measure for a radius within which most of the emission arises.



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Next: 5 Variations of Line Up: Abstract Previous: 3 Methods for Computing



Atsuo Okazaki
平成9年1月6日 (月), 午後 6時16分22秒