A&A 440, 595-608 (2005)
DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361:20053315
S. H. P. Alencar1,
-
G. Basri2 -
L. Hartmann3 -
N. Calvet3
1 - Departamento de Física, ICEx-UFMG, CP 702,
Belo Horizonte, MG 30123-970, Brazil
2 -
Astronomy Department, University of California,
Berkeley, CA 94720, USA
3 -
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics,
Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
Received 26 April 2005 / Accepted 7 June 2005
Abstract
We present an analysis of the classical T Tauri star RW Aur A, based on 77
echelle spectra obtained at Lick Observatory over a decade of observations.
RW Aur, which has a higher than average mass accretion rate among T Tauri
stars, exhibits permitted (H
,
H
,
Ca II, He I, NaD) and forbidden
([OI]6300 Å) emission lines with strong variability. The permitted lines
display multiple periodicities over the years, often with variable accretion
(redshifted) and outflow (blueshifted) absorption components, implying that
both processes are active and changing in this system. The broad components
of the different emission lines exhibit correlated behavior, indicating a
common origin for all of them. We compute simple magnetospheric accretion
and disk-wind H
,
H
and NaD line profiles for RW Aur. The observed
Balmer emission lines do not have magnetospheric accretion line profiles.
Our modeling indicates that the wind contribution to these line profiles
is very important and must be taken into account. Our results indicate that
the H
,
H
and NaD observed line profiles of RW Aur are better
reproduced by collimated disk-winds starting from a small region near the
disk inner radius. Calculations were performed in a region extending out to
100
.
Within this volume, extended winds originating over many stellar
radii along the disk are not able to reproduce the three lines simultaneously.
Strongly open-angled winds also generate profiles that do not look like the
observed ones. We also see evidence that the outflow process is highly
dynamic - the low- and high-velocity components of the [OI](6300 Å) line vary
independently on timescales of days. The apparent disappearance from December
1999 to December 2000 of the [OI](6300 Å) low velocity component, which is
thought to come from the disk-wind, shows that the the slow wind can exhibit
dramatic variability on timescales of months (placing limits on how extended
it can be). There is no comprehensive explanation yet for the behavior of
RW Aur, which may in part be due to complications that would be introduced if
it is actually a close binary.
Key words: line: profiles - stars: formation - stars: pre-main sequence - stars: winds, outflows - stars: individual: RW Aur
Many decades ago outflowing wind models were suggested to explain the CTTSs' emission line spectra (Hartmann et al. 1982,1990; Natta & Giovanardi 1990; Kuhi 1964). The early wind models tended to predict P Cygni profiles (i.e. redshifted emission peaks and blueshifted absorption often going below the continuum). This is not what was typically seen - instead the blue-shifted features usually did not reach the continuum (Bertout 1989). Nonetheless, it was always clear that they represented outflow features, and exhibited different variability than other parts of the line profile (Johns & Basri 1995a). Wind models were later replaced by magnetospheric accretion models (Hartmann et al. 1994; Muzerolle et al. 1998,2001; Shu et al. 1994) that are the current consensus to describe CTTSs. These models did not attempt to explain the blueshifted absorption features. They invoke a strong stellar magnetic field to truncate the circumstellar disk near the co-rotation radius and lock the star to the disk. Such fields are indeed observed on PMS stars (Valenti & Johns-Krull 2004; Basri et al. 1992). Some material is accreted through closed magnetic field lines from the disk to the star, while angular momentum is transferred from the star to the disk. Open field lines originating close to the co-rotation radius drive away a wind, and may spiral up to create a jet. Most of the permitted emission lines are produced in the magnetic funnel flow (Hartmann et al. 1994; Muzerolle et al. 2001), while the forbidden emission lines originate in the low density outflow or jet (Pesenti et al. 2003; Shang et al. 2002). When the accretion material hits the stellar surface, a strong shock creates hot spots and the strong continuum excess is produced (Valenti et al. 1993; Calvet & Gullbring 1998). In the following we will call outflow both disk-wind and jet. The inner outflow region, close to the disk (<1 AU from the disk), will be called disk-wind and the outer collimated outflow region will be referred to as a jet.
It has always been clear that both wind and magnetospheric accretion are important
processes acting in the young star-disk systems and contributing to line formation
(Bertout 1989; Appenzeller et al. 2005), both in absorption and emission. Muzerolle et al. (2001) also
suggested that some CTTSs with high mass accretion rates, like DR Tau, may power
powerful outflows and most of the H
line may indeed be produced in winds
due to high optical depth. In this case, the permitted emission lines may be used
as new constraints to the wind characteristics. Therefore the study of the wind in
young stellar objects is necessary to complement the magnetospheric accretion scenario.
RW Aur (HBC 80; K1) is a bright (
mag) CTTS that presents high
values of veiling (
0.3 < v < 6.1, Stout-Batalha et al. 2000) and mass accretion rate
(
to -6, Valenti et al. 1993; Hartigan et al. 1995; White & Ghez 2001), together with strong, variable
emission lines. RW Aur is a member of the Taurus-Auriga star forming region
and it is often quoted as a triple system with the primary
component A separated by 1.4
from components B and C. However, component C
was not detected by White & Ghez (2001) in their HST images, although the expected
flux of component C were much above their detection limit, and therefore
they considered component C a false detection from earlier data (Ghez et al. 1993).
Component A presents periodic variability in its spectral and broad emission lines and is suspected to be a single-lined spectroscopic binary with a 2.77-day period (Gahm et al. 1999; Petrov et al. 2001). This component also powers a variable outflow associated with a bipolar micro-jet, inferred from the presence of both blue and red high velocity components in the forbidden [OI](6300 Å) line (Hirth et al. 1997; Hartigan et al. 1995), and later imaged with adaptive optics (López-Martín et al. 2003; Dougados et al. 2000) and STIS-HST (Woitas et al. 2002) down to about 10 AU from the star. Recently it was shown that the RW Aur jet close to the star rotates (Coffey et al. 2004; Woitas et al. 2005), and the measured toroidal velocities are similar to the values predicted by magneto-centrifugal models of winds, giving strong support to this class of models.
In this paper we present the analysis of the main optical emission lines of RW Aur. Our goal is to investigate the importance of winds and the dynamics of the accretion and outflow processes in this system.
We present the analysis of a sample of 77 spectra of the CTTS RW Aur
listed in Table 1. The observations, obtained over a decade,
were carried out at Lick Observatory, some using the 3 m Shane reflector,
most using the 0.6 m Coudé Auxiliary Telescope (CAT) to feed
the Hamilton Echelle Spectrograph (Vogt 1987) coupled either to a TI
CCD or a FORD
CCD. The entire spectral
format is not covered with the smaller CCD, so observations were generally
obtained in one of two settings: 1) a red setting covering 52 partial
orders from
4900 Å to
8900 Å; and 2) a blue setting
covering 38 partial orders from
3900 Å to
5200 Å.
Whenever possible, blue and red observations were obtained in the same night
or on successive nights. The larger CCD, installed in 1992, records
92
orders covering the optical spectrum from
3900 Å to
8900 Å. The mean resolution of the spectra is
.
Table 1: Journal of observations. JD is the Julian Date of the observation.
The reduction was performed in a standard way described by Valenti (1994) which includes flatfielding with an incandescent lamp exposure, background subtraction, and cosmic ray removal. Wavelength calibration is made by observing a Thorium-Argon comparison lamp and performing a 2D solution to the position of the Thorium lines as a function of order and column number. Radial and barycentric velocity corrections have been applied, and all the data shown here are in the stellar rest frame. No flux calibration has been attempted for these spectra; rather each spectrum has been continuum normalized. Due to differences in weather conditions, exposure times, telescope used, and efficiency between the different CCDs, there is a wide range in the signal-to-noise ratio (S/N) in the data. Part of the data presented here were previously published and analyzed in another context (Johns & Basri 1995a; Stout-Batalha et al. 2000; Basri & Batalha 1990).
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(1) |
In Fig. 2 are overplotted all the observations of the above emission lines
that will be analyzed.
Unfortunately most of the H
profiles fall in the edge of the CCD and are cut in the
early spectra, the He I (5876 Å) line often presents low S/N and many NaD lines show a strong
contamination from the city light of San Jose. Due to that, except for H
,
we will
only analyze the Nov. 99 + Dec. 99 observing runs.
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Figure 1:
Mean (solid black line) and variance (grey shaded area) profiles. Except for
H |
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Figure 2:
Line profiles overplotted. Except for H |
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H
presents a very wide mean emission line profile that goes from -500 km s-1
to +500 km s-1 with a strong absorption centered around -100 km s-1.
The amplitude of the variations is about the same in the long period of observations
from Jan. 89 to Feb. 93 and in the two periods of about one week in Nov. 99 + Dec. 99. Strong intensity
variations can occur in one day, but the maximum amplitude of variability is overall constant.
The far red wing varies less than the rest of the profile and we can easily see that the
blueshifted absorption in H
varies (in amplitude) much less than the other parts
of the profile too, like in SU Aur (Johns & Basri 1995b). We have to keep in mind that
the normalized variance in absorption features looks higher because it is divided
by a smaller number. That is why the blueshifted absorption varies less in amplitude
than the emission peaks but still presents a significant normalized
variance profile. It is actually rather common that some
regions of the emission profiles of CTTSs stay almost invariant because the integrated
line emission seen at their velocities remains constant over the rotation period,
as pointed out by Symington et al. (2005). This could be due to the fact that these velocities
are dominated, for example, by material in outer regions of the wind, like the
blueshifted absorption that may originate in the outer cold wind, or the far red
emission of H
that could be partly formed in the outer receding jet lobe, as
discussed in the following sections.
We consider the lack of flux around
-100 km s-1 in H
to be
partly caused by a true absorption
due to winds instead of being just a lack of emission,
which would correspond to a case where the two emission peaks
would belong to completely separate emission events.
Our interpretation is based on the fact that H
mimics H
,
with the huge blueshifted absorption now clearly going below the continuum.
Three H
spectra actually show
the blueshifted absorption going below the continuum too (JD = 48 554.868,
48 554.974, 48 555.047). These correspond to spectra presenting specially intense
H
blue absorptions and it really points out to a wind origin for the
blueshifted absorption in both H
and H
.
He I (5876 Å) shows broad (BC) and narrow (NC) emission components and redshifted absorption
components. The BC sometimes increases significantly in the blue side and
varies more than the rest of the He I (5876 Å) line profile,
similar to the results of Beristain et al. (2001). According to them, in high mass accretion rate CTTSs
that present highly blueshifted BCs, the blue emission of the BC could be mostly due to winds,
that are also supposed to influence the H
blue emission.
The three spectra that present the most intense BC blue emission (JD = 48 189.912, 51 509.867,
51 530.811) also show strong H
,
H
,
Ca II (8498 Å) and [OI](6300 Å) emission. But there is no
clear evidence that only the blue side of H
is enhanced. It is rather as if the entire
line is more intense. So the strong He I (5876 Å) BC blue emission could be clearly associated to winds
in RW Aur if most of the main emission lines have their origin in the wind too and not only part of
the blue H
emission, as suggested by Beristain et al. (2001).
The main absorption in the NaD lines is blueshifted and we clearly see that a redshifted absorption comes and goes away. The presence of redshifted absorption components at 200-300 km s-1 in some of the lines reinforces the idea that accretion is present in RW Aur and that the system inclination cannot be too close to pole-on.
Ca II (8498 Å) shows a very intense emission with a blueshifted absorption centered
at approximately the same velocity as the H
blue absorption. Like H
again, the
far red wing varies less than the rest of the profile.
The blueshifted absorption in the Ca II (8498 Å) profiles is normally
present, but some spectra show a much shallower absorption than others.
In Fig. 3 we show three chosen Ca II (8662 Å) line profiles that present particularly different morphologies. We would like to point out that one has to be careful not to ascribe the profile features just to system geometry or general morphology - clearly the same system can exhibit rather different profiles at different times. The physical interpretation given to each of these profile types is usually rather distinct. This shows the need for time variable accretion and outflow models of CTTSs.
The veiling in RW Aur is high and variable (e.g. 0.3 < veiling < 6.1, Stout-Batalha et al. 2000). However, if most of the observed line variabilities were due to veiling, the variance profiles would reproduce the mean line profile shape and this is not the case. We did not attempt to measure veiling in the CAT spectra, since the S/N is not high enough for a confident measurement. Most of the 3 m spectra were already previously analyzed (Stout-Batalha et al. 2000) and had their veiling values carefully determined.
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Figure 3: Ca II (8662 Å) lines observed at different epochs. |
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Petrov et al. (2001) analyzed three series of high-resolution spectra of RW Aur from 1996, 1998 and 1999. They found periodic variabilities at about 2.77 days in the weak absorption lines and in narrow emission lines. The broad emission lines in their spectra show periodic changes at about 5.5 days and also present the 2.77-day variabilities but with less power. They propose two possible models to explain their data, one where RW Aur is a binary with a brown dwarf companion with an orbital period of 2.77 days and another which assumes that RW Aur is a single star with a rotational period of 5.5 days and two major hotspots due to accretion from a non-axisymmetric dipole configuration. In the latter the hotspots would be responsible for the detected 2.77 day period.
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Figure 4:
H |
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Our datasets of Nov. 92 and Nov. 99 + Dec. 99 allow us to investigate both the 2.77 and
the 5.5-day periods. Unexpectedly, in the former we find the 2.77 and a 3.9-day
period and in the latter a 4.2 and the 5.5-day period. The 3.9-day period has even
a higher detection power than the 2.77-day one in the Nov. 92 periodogram.
The 4.2 and 5.5-day periods found in the Nov. 99 + Dec. 99 dataset are present
in all the main emission lines (H
,
H
,
Ca II (8498 Å), He I (5876 Å)) and the
5.5-day period is more significant than the 4.2-day one, presenting a higher power
in the periodogram.
Our Nov. 99 + Dec. 99 results agree fairly well with those by Petrov et al. (2001) but the
broad emission lines observed in Nov. 92 do not present the expected 5.5 day periodicity,
although they show the 2.77 day period but with very low power.
If the observed periods are due to hot spots at the stellar surface, the lack
of the 5.5 day periodicity in the earlier data could indicate
a change in the magnetospheric configuration of RW Aur from the early to the
late 90's, corresponding to a different spot configuration between the two epochs.
The H
result shows that the inner blue wing (-150 km s-1 < v < 20 km s-1)
and the far red wing (v > 200 km s-1 ) do not correlate with the blue and red
emission peaks. It points to a different origin of these H
regions with
respect to the rest of the profile. This was also suggested in Sect. 3.1,
since these line regions vary much less than the rest of the profile. In Sect. 3.5
we show that we can reproduce most of the Balmer line emission with a disk-wind, except for the outer
red wing, that may have an important contribution from the receding jet lobe or be partly
due to damping, and part of
the blueshifted absorption, that is thought to come from the outer cold wind, which
we did not model, rather than close to the star.
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Figure 5:
H |
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The He I (5876 Å) blue emission correlates well with itself but does not correlate with the red side of the profile, indicating that the He I (5876 Å) blue and red sides are mostly influenced by different processes. The blue emission is thought to be mainly due to winds and the accretion process is thought to be responsible for the redshifted absorptions in the red wing as proposed by Beristain et al. (2001).
The NaD doublet is difficult to analyze in RW Aur, since both lines present a blue and a red emission, a blue absorption and often a redshifted absorption too. Due to the proximity of the lines, the redshifted emission or absorption of the D1 line is mixed up with the blueshifted emission of the D2 line. What can be said about the correlation matrix is that the 0 km s-1 < v < 200 km s-1 region correlates well with the 300 km s-1 < v < 500 km s-1 region. These correspond to the regions mostly affected by the accretion process, since these are the regions where the redshifted absorptions appear. The almost total lack of correlation across the rest of the line indicates that the blue emission and absorption components of these lines are probably not related to accretion but rather to outflow. This is confirmed by the good correlation between the blue emission of the D1 line and the He I (5876 Å) BC blue emission that is thought to be due to winds and corresponds to the region -1000 km s-1 < v < -700 km s-1 in the NaD autocorrelation matrix (see Fig. 2, lower right panel to locate the He I (5876 Å) line in the NaD velocity frame).
Like the H
line, the Ca II (8498 Å) line also shows an overall good correlation
across the line, except for the blueshifted absorption and the far red wing
regions, indicating that these two regions come probably from different
formation sites than most of the emission profile.
We then calculated correlation matrices between H
and the other emission
lines in order to try to identify which line components have a common origin. The
resulting correlation matrices are displayed in Fig. 6 and
discussed below.
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Figure 6:
Correlation matrices between H |
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H
and H
present correlations between their outer blue emission peaks
and their inner red emission peaks. The inner blue regions of the two lines do not correlate.
This is the region corresponding to the blue absorption and it is also affected by the emission
due to the accretion process, as will be discussed in Sect. 3.5.
The outer red emission wing of H
does not correlate either with H
.
H
and Ca II (8498 Å) are well correlated with each other, except again
for the outer red wings of both lines and the absorption region.
The He I (5876 Å) blue emission is well correlated with the H
blue and red emissions,
except for the H
outer red wing (v > 200 km s-1).
The blue emission of the D1 line correlates well with H
,
except again for
the outer red wing of H
,
indicating a common origin for both emission components.
The D2 line emission is very much affected by the superposed redshifted absorption of
the D1 line and therefore does not show much of a correlation with H
,
as expected.
The correlations found in this section will be discussed in more detail in Sects. 3.5 and 4.
One way to investigate the wind/outflow characteristics of RW Aur is to analyze the [OI](6300 Å) forbidden emission line. In high mass accretion rate CTTSs this line normally presents two distinct components, a high velocity one (HVC) attributed to the jet and a low velocity component (LVC) that is thought to be due to the disk-wind (Hartigan et al. 1995). Unfortunately in many of our early spectra the [OI](6300 Å) line is between échelle orders and in some there are bad pixels that fall right on top of it. The Nov. 99 + Dec. 99 data is the only run that does not present any of the problems above and the corresponding [OI](6300 Å) are displayed in Fig. 7. The RW Aur [OI](6300 Å) line looks very much like the one observed by Hartigan et al. (1995), presenting three emission peaks with two high velocity components, the blue HVC generally less intense and wider than the red one.
We decomposed the [OI](6300 Å) line using Gaussian emissions and
measured the central velocity and equivalent widths of each component. As can be
seen in Fig. 8, the LVC is slightly blueshifted by
-10 km s-1,
the HVC blue peak is centered at about -170 km s-1 and the red peak around
+120 km s-1. All the components show a daily variability in their peak velocities,
the red HVC presenting a much smaller velocity variation than the blue one.
The blue/red velocity asymmetry noticed by several authors between the two jet
lobes holds within the variability, since
in all the
observations.
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Figure 7: [OI](6300 Å) lines observed in the Nov. 99 + Dec. 99 run. The dashed lines show the normalized continuum and the dotted lines represent the mean radial velocity of the three line components (LVC and blue and red HVC). |
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The [OI](6300 Å) high velocity components are thought to come from the jet.
Dougados et al. (2000) imaged the RW Aur A jet in [OI](6300 Å) and [SII](6735 Å) using adaptive
optics at CFHT in December 1997 and saw both a redshifted and a blueshifted jet. They detected
the redshifted jet down to 0.4
(56 AU) from the star. López-Martín et al. (2003) showed that in
December 1998, with a resolution of 0.4
,
both the blue and redshifted jets presented
knots closer than 1
from the star. This was also confirmed by Woitas et al. (2002)
using HST/STIS data with observations from December 2000. Consequently, at least in our
Nov. 99 + Dec. 99 observations, we certainly got the contribution of both jet sides, since
they were seen closer than 2
(our typical seeing at Lick) from the star, one year
before and
one year after we observed RW Aur. This is why we see two high velocity peaks
in the [OI](6300 Å) line of RW Aur, each corresponding to a given jet lobe.
The observations mabe by Woitas et al. (2002), from December 2000, do not present the low velocity component (LVC) of the [OI](6300 Å) line that is clearly seen in our spectra of Nov. 99 + Dec. 99 and is actually more intense than the blue HVC (see Fig. 7). They say that the lack of LVC in their data and the presence of it in the profiles obtained by Hartigan et al. (1995) and Hirth et al. (1997) in 1990 and 1993 respectively, indicate temporal variability on a timescale of a few years. However, the timescale of the variability is actually much shorter, since the LVC is clearly present in our data obtained just one year before theirs. If the LVC is really associated with the disk-wind, as suggested by the models of Kwan & Tademaru (1995,1988), then the RW Aur A disk-wind can vary dramatically in a short period of a year or less, perhaps due to magnetic instabilities as proposed by Goodson et al. (1999) and Romanova et al. (2003). As can be seen in Figs. 7 and 9, the intensities and equivalent widths of the three emission components of [OI](6300 Å) also smoothly vary on a daily basis, showing the outflow is a dynamical process even on a timescale of hours. The presence of daily variations implies that the region responsible for the variable emission in the jet cannot be greater in extent than a few times ten stellar radii, which corresponds to a few times the distance covered at the jet velocity in a day. In the first two panels of Fig. 9 we show equivalent width ratios between the LVC and the HVC. The fact that the variations of the three components are independent one from the other shows that the observed line variability cannot be due to veiling alone.
The equivalent width ratio of the LVC to the HVC in our data is in the range
0.4 < EW(LVC)/EW(HVC) < 0.8, as can be seen in Fig. 9 (right panel).
Hartigan et al. (1995) measured in four spectra the total equivalent width of the
[OI](6300 Å) line and the equivalent width of the
km s-1 region, that can be
associated to the LVC and found 0.3 < EW(LVC)/EW(HVC) < 0.5. Hirth et al. (1997)
obtained EW(LVC)/EW(HVC) = 0.14, but we redid their profile decomposition and
obtained instead EW(LVC)/EW(HVC) = 0.39. We do not know the origin of such a discrepancy
of values since we both used a Gaussian decomposition to determine the contribution
of each component. These equivalent width ratios show that the disk-wind flux in RW Aur
is comparable to the flux carried by the jet. Since the disk-wind is supposed
to have much higher densities than the jet, as can be inferred by the presence of the LVC
in [OI] lines but not in [SII] lines, we would therefore expect that the disk-wind
may significantly contribute to most of the permitted emission lines as well.
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Figure 8:
Central velocity of the [OI](6300 Å) line components.
The amplitude of the vertical scale in all three plots is
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Figure 9: Equivalent width ratio between the LVC and the HVCs of the [OI](6300 Å) line. |
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Figure 10:
Sketch of the magnetosphere and wind geometries used in the models.
The calculations were extended up to 100 |
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In the left panels of Fig. 12 are shown the
mean RW Aur observed H
,
H
and NaD line profiles and the corresponding
magnetospheric accretion profiles overplotted.
As in the case of DR Tau (Muzerolle et al. 2001), the magnetospheric accretion profiles of H
are much less intense and narrower than the observed one. Part of the H
line flux may
come from accretion, as suggested by the results of the higher temperature model, but
in general the agreement of the magnetospheric accretion model with the observations
is rather poor. We must also caution that in order to calculate models with
K
we had to use a very high heating rate, that, if used in the disk-wind calculations,
would generate NaD profiles much more intense than the observed ones.
For DR Tau Muzerolle et al. (2001) were able to reproduce the observed NaD line with
the magnetospheric accretion model, except for the narrow blueshifted absorption
component that should come from the wind. They argue that the much
lower optical depth of the sodium lines precludes emission from the wind but
there is enough density at the base of the magnetosphere to generate the observed sodium emission.
Appenzeller et al. (2005) however have shown that NaD can be also produced in the region
where we performed our disk-wind calculations.
In RW Aur the observed NaD blueshifted absorption is very deep and wide, indicating that the wind
contribution to the line is important. The presence of strong blueshifted emission
at v < -150 km s-1 (see Fig. 2) cannot be explained by magnetospheric accretion that tends
to generate rather narrow sodium line profiles centered at rest velocity, like in DR Tau.
Therefore we argue that in RW Aur a significant fraction of the sodium lines, like the Balmer lines,
may come from the wind.
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Figure 11:
Temperature, source function, hydrogen density and hydrogen ionization fraction distributions
for a model calculated with |
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Recently Woitas et al. (2002) traced the RW Aur outflow down to the stellar position in H
in both lobes. They say there are two H
velocity peaks on the star with
the same velocities as the blue and redshifted lobes of the jet,
suggesting they are tracing the jet lobes back to their source.
They suggested that the H
line of RW Aur could be mostly produced in a wind
instead of in the magnetosphere.
Following Woitas et al. (2002) suggestion, we tried to investigate how much of the main
emission lines of RW Aur could be due to winds.
We calculated wind models using the Blandford & Payne (1982) representation for
the wind, which assumes ideal, axisymmetric MHD and steady flow from a Keplerian
accretion disk. With the above assumptions, if we specify the poloidal structure
of the magnetic field, we can derive the poloidal and toroidal velocity components
and the density from mass conservation. We assume the problem is self-similar, so
the solution for one field line can be scaled for other field lines. Once we have
a disk-wind model set, we solve the radiative transfer equations using the Sobolev
method, following the procedure outlined in Hartmann et al. (1994) for
the magnetospheric accretion case. The main difference is that, if the line of sight
intersects the disk, we now account for the disk contribution to the emergent line profile.
The wind temperature is determined balancing an optically thin radiative cooling rate
(
)
given by Hartmann et al. (1982) with an adjustable heating rate (
Q/r3),
such as one would expect if the main heating source were dissipation of magnetic waves.
We used a simple two-level plus continuum atom approximation with rotation but no line
damping and this will certainly underpredict line widths,
but we will still be able to explore the overall importance of winds to the
permitted line profiles.
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Figure 12: Mean observed line profiles are shown as solid lines. We did not model the sodium D2 line but only the D1 line. Left: magnetospheric accretion profiles (dashed and dash-dotted lines). Right: disk-wind profiles (dashed lines). Although our wind models are very simple, they provide a much better match to the observed emission line profiles of RW Aur than the magnetospheric accretion models. |
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We set the footpoint of the inner wind field line at 2.2
,
starting where the
magnetosphere ends.
We tested disk-wind configurations with various degrees of wind collimation,
,
where
is the launching angle shown in Fig. 10,
and different star-disk inclinations (
).
We also calculated disk-wind models extending in the z direction up to 100
and with outer wind footpoint radii (
)
going from 3.2
to 100
.
The best models that simultaneously match the H
,
H
and NaD observations
correspond to collimated narrow winds. What we mean by a narrow
wind is a model that starts from the disk only over a limited range
of radii not very far from the co-rotation radius (from 2.2
to 3.2
in our case).
An extended disk-wind spanning a larger range of radii along the disk (
and
)
does not generate emission line profiles that fit simultaneously
the H
,
H
and NaD observed ones.
As we increase
,
we also increase the low temperature (
3000 K to 5000 K) gas available and the sodium line
intensity increases much more rapidly than H
and H
.
So in order to fit the H
and
H
lines, we end up with a sodium line that is much more intense than the observed ones.
This was valid for disk-wind models with various degrees of collimation.
In general, with
,
the H
and H
fit to the observations was also worse
than with
.
To launch the wind, the field line has to make at most an angle of 60
with the
disk (Blandford & Payne 1982). Since RW Aur has a very collimated microjet (jet opening angle
of 3-4
,
Dougados et al. 2000) that goes at least down to 14 AU from the star (Woitas et al. 2002), we started
the calculations with a very collimated wind model (launching angle
![]()
). We
later tried less collimated wind models with
![]()
,
40
and 30
but the fits to the observed profiles were always worse. In general, as we decrease the
launching angle of the wind, the blue emission gets too blue and the red emission peak intensity
decreases a lot. It is however still possible to find some reasonable agreement with the
observations with
![]()
.
The calculations in the z direction were extended
up to 100
,
but our results were not very sensitive to the the extent of the wind
within this limited volume.
The best agreement between observations and wind models was obtained with inclination
values in the range 55
65
.
According to López-Martín et al. (2003), the jet
inclination with respect to the line of sight is
,
assuming that knot
proper motions trace actual fluid motions and not wave pattern speeds. Woitas et al. (2002) point out
that even if the observed tangential velocity is a pattern speed, it is still a lower limit
for the actual gas tangential speed, so ![]()
.
Our suggested inclination
values are therefore consistent, within the uncertainties, with the inferred values for
the jet inclination angle, supposing the jet is perpendicular to the disk plane.
The temperature distribution, source function, hydrogen density and hydrogen ionization fraction
of a typical disk-wind model are displayed in Fig. 11.
The temperatures (
K) and hydrogen ionization fractions (
)
are overall in the range expected by observations of optical jets,
K and
(Bacciotti 2002) and X-wind models (Shang et al. 2002). Our calculation domain is
however much smaller than the region observed by Bacciotti (2002) and the large region (0-8000 AU) computed
by Shang et al. (2002) and our
calculated disk-winds do not reach the higher observed and calculated temperatures (T > 9000 K).
Dougados et al. (2002) derived estimates of hydrogen ionization fraction and temperature for RW Aur along the
jet in the region
10 AU-50 AU away from the star, and thus outside our calculation
domain, obtaining for the wind
and
K.
Some of our disk-wind calculated profiles are displayed in the right panels of Fig. 12,
overplotted with the mean observed line profiles.
There is a general agreement between the disk-wind profiles and the observations,
specially taking into account the observed variability of the lines (see Fig. 2)
and the simplicity so far of the model (2-level atom, no line damping or
turbulence, the Sobolev approximation used to calculate the profiles).
Our disk-wind models, however, do not reproduce the outer red emission of the Balmer
lines and only part of the observed blueshifted absorption is explained by
our calculations. This could be mostly due to a computational limitation in the wind
extension of our models. Since the line emission was only integrated up to
about 100
,
much of the outer cold wind, where most of the blueshifted absorption
is thought to arise and part of the receding jet lobe, where some of the far red emission
could come from, are not included in the calculations.
We also calculated H
,
H
and NaD line profiles with a more moderate but still
high mass accretion rate (10-7
/yr) which is closer to the values obtained
by Valenti et al. (1993) and White & Ghez (2001), using this time the stellar parameters proposed by
the latter (M=1.34
,
R=1.7
and
K). The main difference
is that the co-rotation radius now lies in the range 3.3
< r < 4.6
and we adopted the mean value of
.
The magnetospheric and disk-wind profiles
obtained are very similar to the ones calculated with the higher mass accretion rate.
Once again the magnetospheric accretion profiles do not agree with the observations and
we only obtained a good agreement with narrow collimated disk-wind models, now starting from
4
to 5
along the disk.
Despite the model limitations, comparing the magnetospheric and disk-wind results with the observations (Fig. 12) we see that, in the RW Aur case, the wind contribution to the line profiles is very important and must be taken into account in order to reproduce the observations. It is clear that the correct model to describe CTTSs should actually include both the magnetosphere and an extended disk-wind calculated consistently. This however is beyond the scope of the present work and will be left for a future implementation.
The analysis of the correlation matrices of the main emission lines of RW Aur
point to a common origin for the H
,
H
,
Ca II (8498 Å), He I (5876 Å) (BC) and NaD
emissions, except for the outer red wings of H
,
H
and Ca II (8498 Å) that
do not correlate with the rest of the profiles.
We have shown in the previous section that
disk-wind models can reproduce most of the observed characteristics of the Balmer and NaD line
regions that correlate with each other, suggesting that the wind is a
common formation region of the main emission lines observed in RW Aur.
This result agrees with the scenario proposed by Beristain et al. (2001) where
the He I (5876 Å) BC blue emission is also mostly due to winds.
However, part of the red emission peak of H
and H
does not seem to originate
either in the magnetosphere or in the wind close to the star (d < 100
1 AU, the limit of our calculations). This is evident comparing the observed and computed
profiles and also clear from the H
correlation matrices (Sect. 3.3),
since the H
far red wing (v > 200 km s-1) does not correlate with the rest of the profile.
One possibility is that our observed H
line has a significant contribution from the red lobe
of the jet that was observed closer than 1'' from the star by López-Martín et al. (2003) and
Woitas et al. (2002) one year before and one year after our observations respectively.
The receding jet is always in sight and that could
explain the small variability of the outer red emission.
Another possibility to explain the outer wings of the Balmer lines is a significant
contribution due to line damping that is certainly important at these high mass accretion rates
and that we are not taking into account in the current disk-wind models.
The addition of damping might also help to explain why the red wings are not well
correlated with other variabilities, since they will naturally be more stable
than other regions affected by Doppler shifts.
Woitas et al. (2002) proposed that the observed emission of the RW Aur H
line can mostly
originate in the blue and red jet lobes, since they trace the H
emission in both
lobes back to the stellar position, and the H
blue and red velocity peaks
observed on the star present the same velocities as the blue and redshifted lobes
of the jet.
The H
profile is indeed expected to have a strong contribution from the wind,
as we have shown in the previous section, but the observed profile cannot mostly come from the
outer collimated wind regions since there is evidence that most of the observed H
line comes
from a region that is common to all the broad emission lines, including NaD, Ca II (8498 Å)
and the He I (5876 Å) BC, that are not expected to be produced in the low density outer wind.
Woitas et al. (2002) traced the redshifted jet down to approximately 15 AU from the
star in the forbidden emission lines, which ends up being an upper limit for the
projected radius of an opaque disk around RW Aur.
Although the RW Aur
system apparently presents a small accretion disk (
AU for ![]()
and
a projected disk radius of 15 AU)
compared to standard values commonly attributed to a typical CTTS (
AU),
the red jet lobe close to the star should still be occulted by the outer projected disk radius at
the inclinations suggested by the microjet and our works (43
![]()
).
The receding jet should not be visible either through the inner disk gap. Due to the high
mass accretion rate of the system, the co-rotation radius lies very close to the star
(
)
and the receding inner jet is therefore almost totally
occulted by the star and the inner disk edge at the inclinations corresponding to the best model
fits. What causes the double-peaked profile in our models is a geometrical effect of the velocity
projection of the material in the open wind field lines. The disk-wind actually behaves as a series
of expanding and rotating rings that naturally gives rise to a double-peaked line profile.
Woitas et al. (2005) recently measured the rotation of the RW Aur bipolar jet using
STIS-HST. They estimated that the wind detected in the optical forbidden lines
is launched within about 0.5 AU from the star for the blue lobe and within 1.6 AU
for the red lobe, thus predicting a disk-wind that extends
over several stellar radii, which is different from what we found in this work.
They also obtained a magnetic lever arm (the ratio between the Alfvén and the footpoint
radii) in the range
,
which is
in agreement with the value used in our models (
)
and falls
within the values predicted by the Casse & Ferreira (2000) and Ferreira (2002) wind models, being actually
consistent with their warm solutions and thus suggesting that some heating must be provided at the
base of the jet. It would be very interesting to calculate the Balmer and Sodium line emissions
predicted by extended warm wind solutions to see if they are consistent with our observations,
in the sense that the wind contribution to the permitted line emissions cannot
exceed the observed ones.
Basri & Batalha (1990) analyzed some of the 3 m spectra used in this study and saw no correlation
between the H
equivalent width and veiling but found a strong correlation
between the H
flux and veiling in RW Aur. This is what is expected
if the power in the line increased proportionally to the continuum. In the context
we propose here, where most of the H
line of RW Aur arises in the wind, this
correlation result supports the idea of a direct connection between the
accretion and outflow processes.
We saw strong evidence with our data that the outflow process is highly dynamic. For example, the [OI](6300 Å) forbidden line, which is supposed to be formed in the disk-wind (LVC) and the jet (HVC), was observed to vary on a timescale of hours in our observations. The apparent disappearance of the LVC from December 1999 to December 2000 shows that the wind can present a dramatic variability on longer timescales too.
We also saw evidence from the periodogram analysis of the main emission lines that the hot spot configuration may have changed in a period of a few years, implying a significant change in the magnetospheric configuration of the system in such a short timescale. The dynamic nature of the inflow/outflow process in CTTSs on several timescales was also observed by Bouvier et al. (2003) analyzing synoptic observations of the CTTS AA Tau.
Overall we have seen that the contribution of the disk-wind to the observed line profiles of this extreme CTTS is very significant and must be taken into account in order to describe the spectroscopic observations. The flux in the disk-wind of RW Aur is particularly intense and about the same order of magnitude as the jet flux. Accretion is certainly occurring at the same time, but due to the characteristics of the system (high mass accretion rate, small magnetosphere and consequently high densities, low temperatures and small emitting area in the magnetosphere), the influence of magnetospheric accretion on the observed emission line profiles is not very strong.
Our results show the need for time variable CTTS models that include both the magnetosphere and the disk-wind calculated in a consistent way in order to describe the synoptic observations of such active young stars.
Acknowledgements
This research is based on data collected on the Shane 3 m and CAT telescopes at Lick Observatory run by the University of California. S.H.P.A. acknowledges support from CAPES (PRODOC program) and CNPq (grant 201228/2004-1). G.B. acknowledges support from the NSF through grant AST86-16863. N.C. and L.H. acknowledge support from NASA through grant NAG5-13210 and NASA grant GO-08627.01-A from the Space Telescope Science Institute.