02 May 2018: Aurora Sicilia-Aguilar - Reading between the lines: Adventures in spectroscopy of young and wild stars and their environments

Emission lines are one of the defining characteristics of young stars, and carry an overwhelming (and not-so-easy-to-extract) amount of information about accretion and activity processes in the stellar magnetosphere and innermost disk. Using time-resolved spectroscopy covering several rotational and disk orbital periods, we can obtain a very detailed view of the structure and variability of accretion columns and spots and information on the presence and launching points of stellar/disk winds in young stars. Time-resolved emission (and absorption) line spectroscopy can also trace parts of the inner disk at scales that are not accessible by direct imaging or interferometry. Understanding these processes and how they affect the observed spectra can also help us to identify (or rule out) the presence of young and newly-formed planets and stellar companions that may be perturbing the disk. I will present the results for four stars with very different spectral types and behaviours (EX Lupi, GW Ori, ASASSN-13db, and ZCMa), discussing the power and limitations of emission line tomography and exploring what we can learn from "reading between the (spectral) lines" in these and other objects. Finally, I will also discuss how we can apply similar analysis techniques to other types of sources and to the analysis of molecular line profiles in star-forming regions, to explore and visualize the velocity structure and the formation history of the cluster.