Characterisation of the magnetic field of the Herbig Be star HD 200775⋆

• Main Authors: E. Alecian, C. Catala, G. A. Wade, J. -f. Donati, P. Petit, J. -c. Bouret, S. Bagnulo, C. Folsom, J. Grunhut, J. Silvester
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: narval
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.487.8896; http://www.arm.ac.uk/preprints/2007/514.pdf

Accepted. Received; in original form The origin of the magnetic fields observed in some intermediate mass and high mass main sequence stars is still a matter of vigorous debate. The favoured hypothesis is a fossil field origin, in which the observed fields are the condensed remnants of magnetic fields present in the original molecular cloud from which the stars formed. According to this theory a few percent of the PMS Herbig Ae/Be star should be magnetic with a magnetic topology similar to that of main sequence intermediate-mass stars. After our recent discovery of four magnetic Herbig stars, we have decided to study in detail one of them, HD 200775, to determine if its magnetic topology is similar to that of the main sequence magnetic stars. With this aim, we monitored this star in Stokes I and V over more than two years, using the new spectropolarimeters ESPaDOnS at CFHT, and Narval at TBL. By analysing the intensity spectrum we find that HD 200775 is a double-lined spectro-scopic binary system, whose secondary seems similar, in temperature, to the primary. We have