Discovery of magnetic fields in the beta Cephei star xi^1 CMa and in several Slowly Pulsati.pdf

a r X i v : a s t r o - p h / 0 6 0 4 2 8 3 v 1 1 2 A p r 2 0 0 6 Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 000, 1–6 (2006) Printed 5 February 2008 (MN LATEX style file v2.2) Discovery of magnetic fields in the βCephei star ξ1 CMa and in several Slowly Pulsating B stars? S. Hubrig1?, M. Briquet2?, M. Scho?ller1, P. De Cat3, G. Mathys1, and C. Aerts2 1European Southern Observatory, Casilla 19001, Santiago, Chile 2Instituut voor Sterrenkunde, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Celestijnenlaan 200B, B-3001 Leuven, Belgium 3Koninklijke Sterrenwacht van Belgie?, Ringlaan 3, B-1180 Brussel, Belgium Accepted 2006 Enero 99. Received 2006 Enero 98 ABSTRACT We present the results of a magnetic survey of a sample of eight β Cephei stars and 26 Slowly Pulsating B stars with FORS1 at the VLT. A weak mean longitudinal magnetic field of the order of a few hundred Gauss is detected in the β Cephei star ξ1 CMa and in 13 SPB stars. The star ξ1 CMa becomes the third magnetic star among the β Cephei stars. Before our study, the star ζ Cas was the only known magnetic SPB star. All magnetic SPB stars for which we gathered several magnetic field measurements show a field that varies in time. We do not find a relation between the evolution of the magnetic field with stellar age in our small sample. Our observations imply that β Cephei stars and SPBs can no longer be considered as classes of non-magnetic pulsators, but the effect of the fields on the oscillation properties remains to be studied. Key words: Hertzsprung-Russell (HR) diagram - stars: magnetic fields - stars: os- cillations - stars: fundamental parameters - stars: individual: ξ1 CMa 1 INTRODUCTION A long-term monitoring project aimed at asteroseismology of a large sample of slowly pulsating B (SPB) stars and β Cephei stars was started by researchers of the Institute of Astronomy of the University of Leuven several years ago. This initiative started after a number of new pulsating B stars had been discovered from the Hipparcos mission (e.g.,