The Envelopes of B[e] Supergiants in the Magellanic Clouds as Seen by Polarimetry

B[e] supergiants (sgB[e]) are rare, massive post-main sequence stars. Their evolutionary status with respect to other objects on the H-R diagram is still unknown. These stars are surrounded by a non-spherically symmetric circumstellar envelope, from which arises a net intrinsic polarization. Therefore, spectropolarimetry is a very useful tool in the study of these objects. Since emission, absorption, and scattering processes are imprinted in the polarized flux, this technique can provide useful information about the circumstellar structure. We present a study of the envelope structure of RMC 82, a sgB [e] in the Large Magellanic Cloud, based on spectropolarimetric data. Our observations were obtained with the 8.2 m VLT/UT1 telescope at the Paranal Observatory (ESO). We analyzed the Balmer line formation loci, and their corresponding physical conditions. The data was modeled by a bimodal wind model of the circumstellar envelope, consisting of a slow, dense equatorial wind and a fast polar wind. The calculations were done with the radiative transfer code HDUST. Our results suggest that this geometry is indeed consistent with the RMC 82 data. Our best fit parameters are an opening angle of the disk of 15 and a total mass loss rate of 1.0 x 10(-5) M-Theta yr(-1) sr(-1).