Rotational mixing in Be stars: nitrogen abundances for a sample of Be stars from the MiMeS survey

Photospheric nitrogen abundances for a sample of 26 Be stars and 16 normal B stars were found using high-resolution spectra from the Magnetism in Massive Stars (MiMeS) spectroscopic survey. Nitrogen abundances were obtained using non-local-thermodynamic-equilibrium equivalent widths and line profiles, and Monte Carlo simulation was used to determine the error bounds of the measured nitrogen abundances due to uncertainties in the adopted stellar parameters, continuum normalization and atomic data. In addition, the effects of gravitational darkening and disc contamination on the measured Be star nitrogen abundances were investigated. About one third of the sample of Be stars and half of the normal B-type stars have nitrogen enrichment that may be due to rotational mixing in these rapidly rotating objects. Corrections for gravitational darkening and disc contamination do not significantly change the overall results for the Be star sample. The average nitrogen abundance of the B and Be star samples coincides with the solar abundance, although the dispersion in the nitrogen abundances is much larger in the Be star sample. The Be star sample also has a significant fraction of sub-solar nitrogen abundance objects that are not present in significant numbers in the B star sample. This may point to yet unresolved systematic errors in the analysis of the Be stars.