1995A&A...293..828A

Many attempts have already been made to propose a global physical model for a Be star by compiling separate studies (see e.g. Cote & Waters 1987A&A...176...93C; Waters 1993, IAUS, 162, in press, among others). Unfortunately, photometric studies are usually left out of these syntheses. We here combine four different kinds of observations (photometric period, rotation velocity, intrinsic linear polarisation in the visual and IR excess) to see if they contain compatible information. From this study, we try to put constraints on the geometry of the stellar disc. We find that the IR colour excess is not correlated to the photometric variability, contrary to the polarisation. The latter shows equal correlations with vsini and its square, indicating that the polarisation is an equally important function of sini and sin²i. The relation between the photometric period and the polarisation indicates a possible link between stellar pulsation and mass loss. We stress, however, that our results are based on a very limited number of stars (14).