The Hubble Space Telescope Advanced Camera for Surveys Emission Line Survey of Andromeda. I. Classical Be Stars

We present results from a two epoch Hubble Space Telescope Hα emission line survey of the Andromeda galaxy that overlaps the footprint of the Panchromatic Hubble Andromeda Treasury (PHAT) survey. We found 552 (542) classical Be stars and 8429 (8556) normal B-type stars in epoch # 1 (epoch # 2), yielding an overall fractional Be content of 6.15% ± 0.26% (5.96% ± 0.25%). The fractional Be content decreased with spectral subtype from ∼23.6% ± 2.0% (∼23.9% ± 2.0%) for B0-type stars to ∼3.1% ± 0.34% (∼3.4% ± 0.35%) for B8-type stars in epoch # 1 (epoch # 2). We observed a clear population of cluster Be stars at early fractional main-sequence lifetimes, indicating that a subset of Be stars emerge onto the zero-age main sequence as rapid rotators. Be stars are 2.8× rarer in M31 for the earliest subtypes compared to the Small Magellanic Cloud, confirming that the fractional Be content decreases in significantly more metal-rich environments (like the Milky Way and M31). However, M31 does not follow a clear trend of Be fraction decreasing with metallicity compared to the Milky Way, which may reflect that the Be phenomenon is enhanced with evolutionary age. The rate of disk-loss or disk-regeneration episodes we observed, 22% ± 2% yr^-1, is similar to that observed for seven other Galactic clusters reported in the literature, assuming these latter transient fractions scale by a linear rate. The similar number of disk-loss events (57) as disk-renewal events (43) was unexpected since disk dissipation timescales can be ∼2× the typical timescales for disk build-up phases.