Projected Rotational Velocities and Stellar Characterization of 350 B Stars in the Nearby Galactic Disk

TL;DR

This study measures the projected rotational velocities of 350 early B-type stars in the nearby Galactic disk, revealing distribution patterns related to their environments and potential ejection mechanisms.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive dataset of vsini for B stars within 1.5 kpc, using high-resolution spectra and a new analysis method for spectral type and rotational velocity estimation.

Findings

Flat vsini distribution between 0-150 km/s for the entire sample

Field stars show more slow rotators, clusters have more moderate rotators

Runaway stars' vsini distribution resembles dense environment stars

Abstract

Projected rotational velocities (vsini) are presented for a sample of 350 early B-type main sequence stars in the nearby Galactic disk. The stars are located within ~1.5 kpc from the Sun, and the great majority within 700 pc. The analysis is based on high-resolution spectra obtained with the MIKE spectrograph on the Magellan Clay 6.5-m telescope at the Las Campanas Observatory in Chile.Spectral types were estimated based on relative intensities of some key line absorption ratios and comparisons to synthetic spectra. Effective temperatures were estimated from the reddening-free Q index, and projected rotational velocities were then determined via interpolation on a published grid that correlates the synthetic full width at half maximum of the He I lines at 4026, 4388 and 4471 A with vsini. As the sample has been selected solely on the basis of spectral types it contains an selection of B stars in the field, in clusters, and in OB associations. The vsini distribution obtained for the entire sample is found to be essentially flat for vsini values between 0-150 km/s, with only a modest peak at low projected rotational velocities. Considering subsamples of stars, there appears to be a gradation in the vsini distribution with the field stars presenting a larger fraction of the slow rotators and the cluster stars distribution showing an excess of stars with vsini between 70 and 130 km/s. Furthermore, for a subsample of potential runaway stars we find that the vsini distribution resembles the distribution seen in denser environments, which could suggest that these runaway stars have been subject to dynamical ejection mechanisms.