Related papers: Formation of Be star decretion discs through bound…
Circumstellar discs of Be stars are thought to be formed from material ejected from a fast-spinning central star. This material possesses large amounts of angular momentum and settles in a quasi-Keplerian orbit around the star. This simple…
Be stars are rapidly rotating B stars with Balmer emission lines that indicate the presence of a Keplerian, rotationally supported, circumstellar gas disc. Current disc models, referred to as "decretion discs", make use of the zero torque…
In the past decade, a consensus has emerged regarding the nature of classical Be stars: They are very rapidly rotating main sequence B stars, which, through a still unknown, but increasingly constrained process, form an outwardly diffusing…
This paper presents a detailed statistical determination of the equatorial rotation rates of classical Be stars. The rapid rotation of Be stars is likely to be linked to the ejection of gas that forms dense circumstellar disks. The physical…
Accretion of material from a protoplanetary disc on to a forming giant planet can spin the planet up to close to its breakup rate, $\Omega_{\rm b}=(G M_{\rm p}/R_{\rm p}^3)$, where $M_{\rm p}$ is the mass and $R_{\rm p}$ is the radius of…
We discuss steady viscous Keplerian decretion discs around rapidly rotating stars. We assume that low frequency modes, which may be excited by the opacity bump mechanism, convective motion in the core, or tidal force if the star is in a…
Hot, massive stars (spectral types O and B) have extreme luminosities ($10^4 -10^6 L_\odot$) that drive strong stellar winds through UV line-scattering. Some massive stars also have disks, formed by either decretion from the star (as in the…
Classical Be stars are an enigmatic subclass of rapidly rotating hot stars characterized by dense equatorial disks of gas that have been inferred to orbit with Keplerian velocities. Although these disks seem to be ejected from the star and…
Circumstellar discs around Be stars are formed by the material ejected by the central star. This process removes excess angular momentum from the star as viscosity facilitates the mass and angular momentum transfer within the disc and its…
We examine Be star discs in highly eccentric Be/X-ray systems. We use a three-dimensional smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) code to model the structure of the Be star disc and investigate its interactions with the secondary star over…
Rapidly rotating Be stars are observed as shell stars when the decretion disc is viewed edge on. Transitions between the two implies that the discs may be warped and precessing. Type II X-ray outbursts are thought to occur when the warped…
The spin-down of Be stars due to angular momentum transport from star to disc has been considered. This has been prompted by empirical studies of observed optical and IR line profile studies indicating that the disc is rotating in a…
As the largest population of high mass X-ray binaries, Be/X-ray binaries provide an excellent laboratory to investigate the extreme physics of neutron stars. It is generally accepted that Be stars possess a circumstellar disc, providing an…
Be stars are thought to be fast rotating stars surrounded by an equatorial disc. The formation, structure and evolution of the disc are still not well understood. In the frame of single star models, it is expected that the surface of an…
With three-dimensional hydrodynamical simulations we show that the size of the decretion disc and the structure of the accretion flow onto the neutron star in a Be/X-ray binary strongly depends upon the disc aspect ratio, $H/R$. We simulate…
Decretion (or external) disks are gas disks freely expanding to large radii due to their internal stresses. They are expected to naturally arise in tidal disruption events, around Be stars, in mass-losing post main sequence binaries, as a…
Be stars are surrounded by outflowing circumstellar matter structured in the form of decretion discs. They are often members of binary systems, where it is expected that the decretion disc interacts both radiatively and gravitationally with…
Massive stars may during their evolution reach the phase of critical rotation when the further increase in rotational speed is no longer possible. The ejection of matter in the equatorial region forms the gaseous outflowing disk, which…
The theory of radiatively-induced warps in accretion discs is applied to the discs of Be stars. It is found that these discs may develop warps in their inner regions, although once the warp amplitude is large enough then the interaction…
While the presence of discs around classical Be stars is well established, their origin is still uncertain. To understand what processes result in the creation of these discs and how angular momentum is transported within them, their…