Photoionization Models for the Inner Gaseous Disks of Herbig Be Stars: Evidence against Magnetospheric Accretion?*

Abstract

Abstract We investigate the physical properties of the inner gaseous disks of three hot Herbig B2e stars, HD 76534, HD 114981, and HD 216629, by modeling CFHT-ESPaDOns spectra using non-LTE radiative transfer codes. We assume that the emission lines are produced in a circumstellar disk heated solely by photospheric radiation from the central star in order to test whether the optical and near-infrared emission lines can be reproduced without invoking magnetospheric accretion. The inner gaseous disk density was assumed to follow a simple power-law in the equatorial plane, and we searched for models that could reproduce observed lines of H i (Hα and Hβ), He i, Ca ii, and Fe ii. For the three stars, good matches were found for all emission line profiles individually; however, no density model based on a single power-law was able to reproduce all of the observed emission lines. Among the single power-law models, the one with the gas density varying as ∼10−10(R */R)3 g cm−3 in the equatorial plane of a 25 R * (0.78 au) disk did the best overall job of representing the optical emission lines of the three stars. This model implies a mass for the Hα-emitting portion of the inner gaseous disk of ∼10−9 M *. We conclude that the optical emission line spectra of these HBe stars can be qualitatively reproduced by a ≈1 au, geometrically thin, circumstellar disk of negligible mass compared to the central star in Keplerian rotation and radiative equilibrium.