Determining stellar accretion rates from Paα and Brβ emission lines with JWST NIRSpec
Accretion of pre-main-sequence stars in NGC 3603
Ciarán Rogers (Universiteit Leiden)
Guido de Marchi (European Space Agency (ESA))
Bernhard R. Brandl (TU Delft - Planetary Exploration, Universiteit Leiden)
More Info
expand_more
Other than for strictly personal use, it is not permitted to download, forward or distribute the text or part of it, without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), unless the work is under an open content license such as Creative Commons.
Abstract
In this Letter, we present the first systematic spectroscopic measurements of the near-infrared (NIR) hydrogen recombination lines Paschen alpha (Paαλ = 1.875 µm) and Brackett beta (Brβλ = 2.626 µm), produced by pre-main-sequence (PMS) stars. Such stars include T Tauri and Herbig AeBe stars, located in the massive Galactic star-forming region NGC 3603. We used measurements obtained from JWST NIRSpec, using multi-object spectroscopy (MOS) mode. Based on the existing empirical relations between Lacc and LBrγ from the literature, we used our new measurements to formulate, for the first time, an empirical relationship between the accretion luminosity, Lacc, of the stars and the line luminosities, Lline, of both Paα and Brβ. These relationships are: log10(Equation presented) = 1.42(±0.18) × log10(Equation presented) + 3.33(±0.42) and log10(Equation presented) = 1.47(±0.18) × log10(Equation presented) + 4.60(±0.57). These new relationships are key to establishing rough estimates of the accretion rates for large samples of PMS stars with JWST.
help_outline