The first determination of the viscosity parameter in the circumstellar disk of a Be Star

TL;DR

This study models the dissipation of a Be star's circumstellar disk to determine the viscosity parameter, finding a high value that suggests turbulence driven by disk instabilities rather than stellar wind.

Contribution

First time-dependent model of Be star disk dissipation used to measure the viscosity parameter directly from observational data.

Findings

Viscosity parameter α ≈ 1.0±0.2

Mass injection rate significantly exceeds stellar wind loss

Turbulence likely caused by disk instabilities

Abstract

Be stars possess gaseous circumstellar decretion disks, which are well described using standard $\alpha$-disk theory. The Be star 28 CMa recently underwent a long outburst followed by a long period of quiescence, during which the disk dissipated. Here we present the first time-dependent models of the dissipation of a viscous decretion disk. By modeling the rate of decline of the V-band excess, we determine that the viscosity parameter $\alpha=1.0\pm0.2$, corresponding to a mass injection rate $\dot{M}=(3.5\pm 1.3) \times 10^{-8}\ M_\sun\,\mathrm{yr}^{-1}$. Such a large value of $\alpha$ suggests that the origin of the turbulent viscosity is an instability in the disk whose growth is limited by shock dissipation. The mass injection rate is more than an order of magnitude larger than the wind mass loss rate inferred from UV observations, implying that the mass injection mechanism most likely is not the stellar wind, but some other mechanism.