Synthetic Spectra of Rotating Stars

Abstract

Many early-type stars have oblate surfaces, spatial temperature variations, and spectral line broadening that indicate large rotational velocities. Rotation ought to have a significant effect on the full spectra of such stars. To infer structural and life history parameters from their spectra, one must integrate specific intensity over the two-dimensional surfaces of corresponding stellar models. Toward this end, we offer PARS (Paint the Atmospheres of Rotating Stars) -- an integration scheme based on models that incorporate solid body rotation, Roche mass distribution, and collinearity of gravity and energy flux (https://github.com/mlipatov/paint_atmospheres). The scheme features a closed-form expression for the azimuthal integral, a high-order numerical approximation of the longitudinal integral, and a precise calculation of surface effective temperature at rotation rates up to 99.9% of Keplerian limit. Extensions of the scheme include synthetic color-magnitude diagrams and planetary transit curves.

17 pages, 10 figures, ApJ accepted; PARS is available at https://github.com/mlipatov/paint_atmospheres; typos corrected, references added