A new approach to the infrared photometric study of Be stars

In this paper, we have collected data for almost all Be stars known so far (1991 sources in total) and photometrically study their infrared properties. 2MASS, WISE, IRAS and Akari data are analysed. It is shown from several two-colour diagrams that from 1 to 60 mu m, infrared excesses for the majority of Be stars are mainly due to the free-free emission or the bound-free emission from proton-electron scattering, while for only a small number of Be stars their infrared excess originates from dust thermal radiation or is caused by the nebulosity/binarity effects. However, in the wavelength range 3.4-12 mu m (the WISE W1, W2 and W3 bands), some Be stars show the properties of dust thermal radiation, which is probably due to silicate dust emission and/or polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon emission. In addition, it is found in this paper that infrared colour excesses indeed increase with wavelength for Be stars. However, no correlations between infrared colours and spectral type can be found for Be stars. Furthermore, several stars have very large infrared excesses in the near-infrared. The reasons for such infrared excesses are given in more detail.