On the Center Shifts of Raman Scattered He II and H$\alpha$ Wings in Symbiotic Stars

Abstract

Using a Monte Carlo technique, we investigate the center shifts that are expected to occur for the broad H$\alpha$ wings and the He II $\lambda$ 6545 feature as a function of the neutral hydrogen column density in symbiotic stars.These two features are proposed to be formed via Raman scattering of UV continuum around Ly$\beta$ and He II $\lambda$ 1025 emission line by neutral hydrogen. The branching ratio of Raman scattering to Rayleigh scattering for UV radiation around Ly$\beta$ is a non-linearly increasing function of the wavelength, which results in enhanced Raman optical fluxes redward of the H$\alpha$ line center as $N_{HI}$ increases. However, we find that the amount of wing center shift is quite small about $20\mathrm{km}{\mathrm{s}}^{-1}$ as $N_{HI}$ increases from $10^{20}\mathrm{c}{\mathrm{m}}^{-2}$ to $10^{21}\mathrm{c}{\mathrm{m}}^{-2}$. Assuming that He II $\lambda$~1025 emission is characterized by a Gaussian profile, the Raman scattered He II 6545 feature exhibits near Gaussian profiles with the peak shifted redward for $N_{HI}<10^{22}\mathrm{c}{\mathrm{m}}^{-2}$. The redward center shift amounts to $1\mathring{\mathrm{A}}$ for $N_{HI}\sim 10^{20}\mathrm{c}{\mathrm{m}}^{-2}$ and decreases as $N_{HI}$ increases up to $N_{HI}\sim 10^{22}\mathrm{c}{\mathrm{m}}^{-2}$, above which no center shift is observed. The redward peak shift is due to the fact that the incident emission profile is symmetric with respect to He II $\lambda$~1025 line center whereas the Raman conversion rate is increasing towards the line center of Ly$\beta$. We emphasize that the determination of $N_{HI}$ by locating the exact peak position of the He II 6545 feature will lift the degeneracy to allow a more accurate estimate of the covering factor of the neutral region, providing strong constraints on the mass loss process occurring in symbiotic stars.

9 pages, 9 figures, accepted for publication in MNRAS