Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 April 2016
Spectral line profiles in pulsating stars are affected by the interplay of a number of velocity fields. In addition to the basic velocities associated with the pulsation mode, the complications of stellar rotation, atmospheric velocity gradients, stellar winds and varying scales of turbulence may also be present. Initial modelling for line profiles in variables assumed a constant ‘intrinsic profile’ which was integrated over the limb-darkened stellar disk. This approach has been used even in recent work for nonradial pulsations (Stamford and Watson 1977; Kubiak 1978) because of computational ease. Employing an LTE analysis to predict centre-to-limb profile variations, which are then integrated over the disk, represents an improvement on this. This has been done, for example, by Parsons (1972) for radial pulsations in cepheids and by Smith (1978) for nonradial oscillations in B stars. Mihalas (1979) has recently made an even more detailed examination of profiles in expanding atmospheres which involved consideration of velocity gradients, departures from LTE and rotation.