Atmospheric models of He-peculiar stars: synthetic He I line profiles and absolute visual magnitudes

Abstract

We analyze the influence of magnetic pressure effects on the atmospheric structure of B peculiar type stars, as well as, on the emergent He I line profiles and absolute visual magnitudes. We consider a photosphere in local thermodynamic and hydrostatic equilibrium. The hydrostatic equilibrium equation is modified to include the Lorentz force. Atomic occupational numbers are computed in LTE considering non-ideal effects in the gas equation of state. We depict the influence of a magnetic field on local He I line profiles and discuss the effects of the helium abundance in magnetic B-type stars. The Lorentz force might explain local variations up to 7 % in the equivalent width of helium lines, while local enhancements of He chemical abundances would produce larger changes. To analyze the line variations in real stars we computed the net contribution of a bipolar magnetic field over the stellar disk. The resulting disk-averaged magnetic field predicts variations with the rotation phase up to 2–3 % in the line EWs for a dipolar magnetic field of 1000 G.