Constraining the Physical Parameters of the Circumstellar Disk of chi Ophiuchi

TL;DR

This paper models the gaseous circumstellar disk of chi Ophiuchi using interferometric data to spatially resolve the inner disk region and constrain its physical parameters, especially the H-alpha-emitting region.

Contribution

First to spatially resolve the inner circumstellar disk of chi Ophiuchi and constrain its physical extent using interferometry.

Findings

Resolved the inner disk region of chi Ophiuchi.

Constrained the size of the H-alpha-emitting region.

Derived specific density variation parameters.

Abstract

We present a numerical model describing a circularly symmetric gaseous disk around the Be star chi Ophiuchi. The model is constrained by long-baseline interferometric observations that are sensitive to the H-alpha Balmer line emission from the disk. For the first time our interferometric observations spatially resolve the inner region of the circumstellar disk around chi Ophiuchi and we use these results to place a constraint on the physical extent of the H-alpha-emitting region. We demonstrate how this in turn results in very specific constraints on the parameters that describe the variation of the gas density as a function of radial distance from the central star.