The birth of Be star disks

Context. Classical Be stars are well known to eject mass to build up a disk, but the details governing the initial distribution and subsequent evolution of this matter into a disk are in general poorly constrained through observations.
Aims. By combining high-cadence time-series spectroscopy with contemporaneous space photometry from the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), we have sampled about 30 mass ejection events in 13 Be stars. Our goal is to constrain the geometrical and kinematic properties of the ejecta as early as possible, facilitating the investigation into the material's initial conditions and evolution, and understanding its interactions with preexisting material.
Methods. The photometric variability is analyzed together with measurements of the at-times rapidly changing emission features in order to identify the onset of outburst events and obtain information about the geometry of the ejecta and how it changes over time. Short-lived line asymmetries display oscillation cycles (Štefl frequencies), which are compared to photometric and stable spectroscopic frequencies.
Results. All Be stars observed with sufficiently high cadence during an outburst are found to exhibit rapid oscillations of line asymmetry with a single frequency in the days following the start of the event. For a given star this circumstellar frequency may differ only slightly from event to event even when the outbursts they are associated with have different properties. These circumstellar frequencies are typically between 0.5 to 2 d−1, and are generally near photometric frequencies. They are slightly below prominent (generally stable) spectroscopic frequencies seen in photospheric absorption lines. The emission asymmetry cycles break down after roughly 5–10 cycles, with the emission line profile converging toward approximate symmetry shortly thereafter. In photometry, several frequencies typically emerge at relatively high amplitude at some point during the mass ejection process.
Conclusions. In all observed cases, freshly ejected material was initially constrained within a narrow azimuthal range, indicating it was launched from a localized region on the stellar surface. The material orbits the star with a frequency consistent with the near-surface Keplerian orbital frequency. This material circularizes into a disk configuration after several orbital timescales. This is true whether or not there was a preexisting disk at the time of the observed outburst. We find no evidence for precursor phases prior to the ejection of mass in our sample. The several photometric frequencies that emerge during outburst are at least partially stellar in origin.