¹ Faculty of Engineering, Hokkai-Gakuen University, Toyohira-ku, Sapporo 062-8605, Japan
² Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge, Madingley Road, Cambridge CB3 0HA, UK
³ School of Physics, University of Exeter, Stocker Road, Exeter EX4 4QL, UK

We study the viscous effects on the interaction between the coplanar Be-star disc and the neutron star in Be/X-ray binaries, using a three-dimensional, smoothed particle hydrodynamics code. For simplicity, we assume the Be disc to be isothermal at the temperature of half the stellar effective temperature. In order to mimic the gas ejection process from the Be star, we inject particles with the Keplerian rotation velocity at a radius just outside the star. Both Be star and neutron star are treated as point masses. We find that the Be-star disc is effectively truncated if the Shakura-Sunyaev viscosity parameter , which confirms the previous semi-analytical result. In the truncated disc, the material decreted from the Be star accumulates, so that the disc becomes denser more rapidly than if around an isolated Be star. The resonant truncation of the Be disc results in a significant reduction of the amount of gas captured by the neutron star and a strong dependence of the mass capture rate on the orbital phase. We also find that an eccentric mode is excited in the Be disc through direct driving due to a one-armed bar potential of the binary.

The strength of the mode becomes greater in the case of a smaller viscosity. In a high-resolution simulation with , the eccentric mode is found to precess in a prograde sense. The mass capture rate by the neutron star modulates as the mode precesses.

Accepted by MNRAS
Preprints from okazaki@elsa.hokkai-s-u.ac.jp
or on the web at http://arXiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0208288