Abstract

In a recent study, Banerjee et al. (2021) produced an atlas of all major emission lines found in a large sample of 115 Galactic field Be stars using the 2-m Himalayan Chandra Telescope (HCT) facility located at Ladakh, India. This paper presents our further exploration of these stars to estimate the electron density in their discs. Our study using Balmer decrement values indicate that their discs are generally optically thick in nature with electron density (ne) in their circumstellar envelopes (CEs) being in excess of 1013 cm-3 for around 65% of the stars. For another 19% stars, the average ne in their discs probably range between 1012 cm-3 and 1013 cm-3. We noticed that the nature of the Hα and Hβ line profiles might not influence the observed Balmer decrement values (i.e. D34 and D54) of the sample of stars. Interestingly, we also found that around 50% of the Be stars displaying D34 greater than 2.7 are of earlier spectral types, i.e. within B0 -B3.

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