Model Atmospheres of Magnetic Chemically Peculiar Stars a Remarkable Strong-field Bp Sicrfe Star HD 137509
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A&A 487, 689–696 (2008) Astronomy DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361:20079134 & c ESO 2008 Astrophysics Model atmospheres of magnetic chemically peculiar stars A remarkable strong-field Bp SiCrFe star HD 137509 D. Shulyak1, O. Kochukhov2,andS.Khan3,4 1 Institute of Astronomy, Vienna University, Turkenschanzstrasse 17, 1180 Vienna, Austria e-mail: [email protected] 2 Department of Astronomy and Space Physics, Uppsala University, Box 515, 751 20, Uppsala, Sweden 3 Physics and Astronomy Department, University of Western Ontario, London, ON, N6A 3K7, Canada 4 Institute for Computational Astrophysics, Saint Mary’s University, 923 Robie Street, Halifax, B3H 3C3, Nova Scotia, Canada Received 23 November 2007 / Accepted 19 May 2008 ABSTRACT Context. In the past few years, we have developed stellar model atmospheres that included effects of anomalous abundances and a strong magnetic field. In particular, the full treatment of anomalous Zeeman splitting and polarized radiative transfer were introduced in the model atmosphere calculations for the first time. The influence of the magnetic field on the model atmosphere structure and various observables were investigated for stars of different fundamental parameters and metallicities. However, these studies were purely theoretical and did not attempt to model real objects. Aims. In this investigation we present results of modeling the atmosphere of one of the most extreme magnetic chemically peculiar stars, HD 137509. This Bp SiCrFe star has a mean surface magnetic field modulus of about 29 kG. Such a strong field, as well as clearly observed abundance peculiarities, make this star an interesting target for applying our newly developed model atmosphere code. Methods. We used the recent version of the line-by-line opacity sampling stellar model atmosphere code LLmodels, which incor- porates the full treatment of Zeeman splitting of spectral lines, detailed polarized radiative transfer, and arbitrary abundances. We compared model predictions with photometric and spectroscopic observations of HD 137509, aiming to reach a self-consistency be- tween the abundance pattern derived from high-resolution spectra and abundances used for model atmosphere calculation. Results. Based on magnetic model atmospheres, we redetermined abundances and fundamental parameters of HD 137509 using spectroscopic and photometric observations. This allowed us to obtain better agreement between observed and theoretical parameters compared to non-magnetic models with individual or scaled-solar abundances. Conclusions. We confirm that the magnetic field effects lead to noticeable changes in the model atmosphere structure and should be taken into account in the stellar parameter determination and abundance analysis. Key words. stars: chemically peculiar – stars: magnetic fields – stars: atmospheres – stars: individual: HD 137509 1. Introduction field is ignored in calculations of model atmosphere of magnetic CP stars. It was shown that the strength of the magnetic field is The atmospheric structure of magnetic chemically peculiar (CP) the key characteristic controlling the magnitude of the magnetic stars deviates from that of normal stars with similar fundamen- field effects, and the polarized radiative transfer should be taken tal parameters because of unusual chemistry, abundance inho- into account. In contrast, the orientation of the magnetic field mogeneities, and the presence of a strong magnetic field. These vector does not have much influence on any of the observed stel- effects are not considered in the standard-model atmosphere cal- lar characteristics and, thus, can be safety ignored in the analysis culations, possibly leading to errors in the stellar parameter de- routines. termination and abundance analysis. To circumvent this long- ff standing problem of stellar astrophysics, we have developed So far, our models with these magnetic field e ects have a new line-by-line opacity sampling model atmosphere code been developed and applied only in the context of purely theoret- models ical studies. Here we make the first attempt to model the atmo- LL (Shulyak et al. 2004). Using this tool in the series models of recent papers, we investigated in detail the effects of anoma- sphere of a real star. We use the LL stellar model atmo- lous Zeeman splitting (Kochukhov et al. 2005), polarized ra- sphere code to investigate the atmospheric structure of the star, diative transfer (Khan & Shulyak 2006a) and inclination of the taking into account individual chemical composition, anomalous magnetic field vector (Khan & Shulyak 2006b) on the model Zeeman splitting, and polarized radiative transfer. structure, energy distribution, hydrogen line profiles, photomet- HD 137509 (HIP 76011, NN Aps) is a B9p SiCrFe chem- ric colors, and the magnitude of bolometric corrections for a grid ically peculiar star with a strong reversing longitudinal field of model atmospheres with different effective temperatures and and variable lines of Si ii and iron-peak elements (Mathys metallicities. For the first time we were able to obtain new results 1991; Mathys & Lanz 1997). Kochukhov (2006) (hereafter applying direct and self-consistent modeling of all these effects Paper I) detected resolved Zeeman split lines in the spectrum and to answer the question of how the magnetic field acts at dif- of HD 137509, showing that this star is characterized by a ferent temperatures and what one could expect if the magnetic non-dipolar magnetic field geometry with a mean surface field Article published by EDP Sciences 690 D. Shulyak et al.: Model atmospheres of magnetic chemically peculiar stars strength of about 29 kG. This is the second-largest magnetic field Table 1. Element abundances of HD 137509. ever found in a CP star (the first place is occupied by the well- known Babcock’s star, Preston 1969). The atmospheric param- Element t12750g3.8 (Paper I) t13750g42 Sun − − − eters, Teff = 12 750 ± 500 K and log g = 3.8 ± 0.1, were de- He < 3.50 < 3.50 1.10 rived in Paper I using theoretical fit to the observed Hβ and Hγ Si −3.73 −3.58 −4.53 atlas Fe −3.19 −3.00 −4.59 lineprofilesbasedonthe 9(Kurucz 1993a) model with − − − enhanced metallicity, [M/H] =+1.0. The appearance of such a Cr 4.20 3.90 6.40 Ti −4.54 −4.20 −7.14 strong magnetic field and the presence of the outstanding abun- Ca −7.93 −7.50 −5.73 dance anomalies inferred in Paper I allow us to use HD 137509 Mg −5.71 −5.50 −4.51 as a test ground for applying the new generation magnetic model Solar abundances were taken from (1). The second and the third atmospheres. columns give, respectively, abundances derived using the scaled-solar In the next section we briefly describe the techniques em- abundance model atmosphere (2) and using model with Teff = 13 750 K, ployed to construct magnetic model atmospheres. Results of the log g = 4.2 with magnetic field included (see Sect. 3.4). Abundances are calculations for HD 137509 are presented in Sect. 3. Main con- given in the logarithmic scale log(Nel/Ntotal). clusions of our study are summarized in Sect. 4. References. (1) Asplund et al. (2005); (2) Kochukhov (2006). 2. Model atmosphere calculations To calculate magnetic model atmospheres we used the cur- rent version of the LLmodels code, originally developed by models Shulyak et al. (2004). The LL is an LTE, 1-D plane- For all models presented in this study we assume a force- parallel, hydrostatic, stellar model atmosphere code for early free configuration of the surface magnetic field. This agrees and intermediate-type stars. The direct line-by-line calculation with the results of multipolar modeling of magnetic topology of the bound-bound opacities implemented in this code allows (Kochukhov 2006) and implies that possible modification of the one to account for arbitrary individual and stratified stellar abun- hydrostatic equilibrium by the Lorentz force (see Shulyak et al. ff dance patterns and include various e ects caused by the mag- 2007, and references therein) is absent in HD 137509. Thus, all netic field. The VALD database (Piskunov et al. 1995; Kupka differences in the pressure structure between magnetic and non- et al. 1999) was used as a source of atomic line parameters. The magnetic models that we obtain are only caused by additional extracted lines were subjected to a preselection procedure inside opacity in the Zeeman components. LLmodels, with the default criterion αline/αcont > 1% in at least one atmospheric layer allowing only those lines to be selected The necessity to perform polarized radiative transfer calcu- that significantly contribute to the opacity (here αline and αcont lations over a wide wavelength range makes the models with are the line center and continuum opacity coefficients, respec- magnetic field very computationally expensive. To reduce com- tively). The numerical experiments showed that this criterion is putational costs, we used the following approach. Fixing fun- sufficient for accurate representation of the energy distribution damental parameters and the abundance pattern we calculated and T-P structure of the models. Decreasing this value leads to a non-magnetic model. After this model was converged, a significant increase in the number of selected lines but without model with magnetic field was iterated using the temperature- producing noticeable changes in overall blanketing (see Shulyak pressure structure of the initial non-magnetic model as a first et al. 2004). The preselection procedure was performed twice per approximation. model atmosphere calculation: at the first iteration and at the iter- The abundances of seven chemical elements for HD 137509 ation when the temperature correction at each model atmosphere were derived in Paper I and are listed in Table 1, (second col- layer is less than a few tens of K. The remaining model iterations umn). Due to the abnormal weakness of the He lines, the value of are performed with the later line list, thus ensuring a consistency the He abundance should be considered only as an upper limit.