THE Hα PROFILES OF Be SHELL STARS

A new set of theoretical H alpha emission line profiles of Be stars has been computed using the code BERAY, which solves the transfer equation along a series of rays passing through the star+disk system, representing an improved treatment over earlier work done by the authors. The new profiles were compared with the previous work, and general trends (such as line profile shapes and correlations between line equivalent widths as a function of initial density rho(0) and power law index n) were recovered. Additionally, BERAY was employed to model the spectra of eight well-known Be shell stars. Some degeneracy was found in the choice of model parameters, highlighting the need to employ alternate observables to constrain the models. However, the inclination angle of the model seemed relatively insensitive to the choices of other parameters, and we show that, with our models, only a very small range of inclination angles can adequately reproduce the observations. Five of our eight targets were found to have inclination angles of 70 degrees or higher, and two more were found to have inclination angles of 67 degrees and 65 degrees. The observation of one target-4 Aquilae-could only be reproduced by models created at an inclination angle of approximately 45 degrees.