An asteroseismic study of the beta Cephei star beta Canis Majoris
Abstract
We present the results of a detailed analysis of 452 ground-based high-resolution high S/N spectroscopic measurements spread over 4.5 years for beta Canis Majoris with the aim to determine the pulsational characteristics of this star, and to use them to derive seismic constraints on the stellar parameters. We determine pulsation frequencies in the SiIII 4553 Angstrom line with Fourier methods. We identify the m-value of the modes by taking into account the photometric identifications of the degrees l. To this end we use the moment method together with the amplitude and phase variations across the line profile. The frequencies of the identified modes are used for a seismic interpretation of the structure of the star. We confirm the presence of the three pulsation frequencies already detected in previous photometric datasets: f1 = 3.9793 c/d (46.057 microHz), f2 = 3.9995 c/d (46.291 microHz) and f3 = 4.1832 c/d (48.417 microHz). For the two modes with the highest amplitudes we unambiguously identify (l1,m1) = (2,2) and (l2,m2) = (0,0). We cannot conclude anything for the third mode identification, except that m3 > 0. We also deduce an equatorial rotational velocity of 31 +/- 5 Km/s for the star. We show that the mode f1 must be close to an avoided crossing. Constraints on the mass (13.5 +/- 0.5 Msun), age (12.4 +/- 0.7 Myr) and core overshoot (0.20 +/- 0.05 HP) of beta CMa are obtained from seismic modelling using f1 and f2.
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