Vol. 584
In section 6. Interstellar and circumstellar matter

Multitechnique testing of the viscous decretion disk model. I. The stable and tenuous disk of the late-type Be star beta CMi

The origin and structure of Be star disks remain open questions from the beginning of the 20th century. Klement et al. combine modern spectrophotometric interferometry, polarimetry, and spectroscopy to dissect the structure of the disk around one of the brightest Be stars, beta CMi. They demonstrate that the inner disk is described well by a canonical isothermal flaring viscous decretion disk, while the outer disk has a shallower profile, and that the star rotates very close to its break-up velocity. The paper also demonstrates that this broad technique, panchromatic observations, and related modeling will considerably improve our understanding of the Be phenomenon.