Classical Am Stars Research Articles

NEOWISE Variability of the New Gaia Herbig Ae/Be and Classical Be Stars—Variability Sample and Statistical Analysis

Light variability is an essential attribute of young stellar objects (YSOs) at the pre-main-sequence (PMS) stage, which can be treated as an indicator to trace star formation. We present a statistical study on the infrared NEOWISE variability of new and large-sized PMS stars as well as Herbig Ae/Be (HAeBe) and classical Be (CBe) stars identified from Gaia Data Release 2. A total of 3792 (including 714 HAeBe), 417, and 473 NEOWISE variable sources were detected from the catalog of 8470 PMS (including 1361 HAeBe), 693 CBe, and 1309 uncertain (possibly belonging to either HAeBe or CBe) stars, respectively. We found that 80% of the PMS variables are dominated by irregular infrared variability, whereas variables in the CBe and uncertain categories exhibit comparable contributions from secular (linear, curved, and periodic) and stochastic (burst, drop, and irregular) variables. This, in combination with infrared W1–W2 colors, W4 luminosities, and the spectral energy distribution slope at near- and mid-infrared wavelengths, suggests different evolutionary stages of the PMS (including HAeBe), uncertain, and CBe stars, from less to more evolved. A statistical analysis of variable source properties (e.g., period and fractional amplitude) further reveals a potential sequence possibly associated with disk evolution for different types of light curves (from linear, to curved, periodic, stochastic, and nonvariable stars). Possible mechanisms for the variable sources are suggested to be related to either extinction via circumstellar matter, or contribution of multiple systems surrounding the YSOs, as opposed to variable accretion (e.g., episodic accretion or accretion burst).

Identification of New Classical Be Stars from the LAMOST Medium Resolution Survey

Be stars are B-type main-sequence stars that display broad Balmer emission lines in their spectra. Identification of the Be population is essential to further examine the formation and evolutionary models. We report the detection of classical Be (CBe) stars from observations with the Large sky Area Multi-Object fiber Spectroscopic Telescope Medium Resolution Survey Data Release 7 (LAMOST MRS DR7). We used a deep convolutional neural network, ResNet, with an 18 layer module to examine the morphology of the Hα profile. We identified 1162 candidate Be stars from the collection of 2,260,387 spectra for 789,918 stars in the database. The ResNet network achieves a Be-star classification accuracy of 99.5%. Among the detections, 151 of these are prior known Be stars crossmatched from the literature. By applying a three-step test, we identified 183 new CBe stars. We find that 41 CBe stars are members of known open clusters. Based on an investigation of the kinematics of the identified CBe stars from the Gaia EDR3 astrometric solutions, we identified 16 new runaways. These new identifications will provide a reference for future follow-ups to further investigate their physical properties.

Study of classical Be stars in open clusters older than 100 Myr

We performed the slitless spectroscopic survey to identify classical Be (CBe) stars in open clusters older than 100 Myr. Observing a sample of 71 open clusters, we identified 13 CBe stars in 11 open clusters, one of, which (TYC 2679-432-1) is a new detection. The 13 CBe stars show both H\(\alpha \) in emission and IR excess, which confirm that they possess gaseous circumstellar discs. Two more CBe stars are found to exhibit H\(\alpha \) in absorption for the first time, indicating that might be passing through disc-less episode presently. The spectral-type estimation is done for all these 15 stars and it is noticed that they belong to B0.5–B8 type. Moreover, we found that the distribution of our sample is peaking near late B-types as expected.

Physical parameters of IPHAS-selected classical Be stars

We present a semi-automatic procedure to obtain fundamental physical parameters and distances of classical Be (CBe) stars, based on the Barbier-Chalonge-Divan (BCD) spectrophotometric system. Our aim is to apply this procedure to a large sample of CBe stars detected by the IPHAS photometric survey, to determine their fundamental physical parameters and to explore their suitability as galactic structure tracers. In this paper we describe the methodology used and the validation of the procedure by comparing our results with those obtained from different independent astrophysical techniques for subsamples of stars in common with other studies. We also present a test case study of the galactic structure in the direction of the Perseus Galactic Arm, in order to compare our results with others recently obtained with different techniques and the same sample of stars. We did not find any significant clustering of stars at the expected positions of the Perseus and Outer Galactic Arms, in agreement with previous studies in the same area that we used for verification.

Study of candidate Be stars in the Magellanic Clouds using near-infrared photometry and optical spectroscopy

Mennickent et al.and Sabogal et al.identified a large number of Classical Be (CBe) candidates in the L&SMC based on their photometric variability using the OGLEII database. They classified these stars into four different groups based on the appearance of their variability. We studied the infrared properties of the sample as well as the spectroscopic properties of a subsample. We cross-correlated the optical sample with the IRSF catalog to obtain the J, H, Ks magnitudes of all the four types of stars in the L&SMC. Spectra of 120 stars belonging to the types 1, 2 and 3 were analysed to study their spectral properties. Among the four types, the type 4 stars is the dominant group. The NIR colour-colour diagrams suggest that the type 4 stars in the LMC have a subclass, which is not found in our Galaxy or in the SMC. The main type 4 sample which is \sim 49% of the total sample has NIR properties similar to the Galactic CBe stars and the SMC type 4 stars. Though the new subclass of type 4 stars have high E(B - V) \sim 0.75, they are not located close to regions with high reddening. The type 3 stars (\sim 6% & 7.3% in the L&SMC) are found to have large H{\alpha} EW in the SMC and some are found to have large NIR excess. This small fraction of stars are unlikely to be CBe stars. The type 2 stars are found in larger fraction in the SMC, when compared to the LMC. The spectroscopic and the NIR properties suggest that these could be CBe stars. The spectroscopic sample of type 1 stars which show H{\alpha} in emission and confirmed as CBe stars are more abundant in the SMC by a factor of 2.6. If the effect of metallicity is to cause more CBe stars in the SMC, when compared to the LMC, then type 1, type 2 and type 4 stars follow this rule, with an enhancement of 2.6, 2.4 and 1.3 respectively.

Consistent Spherical NLTE-Models for BE-Stars

AbstractSpherical NLTE-model photospheres surrounded by envelopes are calculated in order to interpret classical Be-stars. The existence of the Hll-region can be understood by such models. The dependence of the calculated spectra on parameters corresponds to the observations. Applications to special objects show good agreement between the predicted and observed spectra in the visual and infrared wavelengh range.

Abundances of calcium for a sample of 57 classical AM stars

Les abondances sont determinees a partir de mesures photoelectriques de la raie KCaII a 3933 A et des types spectraux, et d'une comparaison avec les etoiles etalon 15 Vul et 28 And