Continuum IR emission of Be star wind-compressed discs

A prescription for the density of a wind compressed disc (WCD) is given and the IR emission of the disc is calculated. The prescription enables emission from WCDs to be calculated simply without recourse to full 21/2-dimensional (21/2-D) modelling of rotating radiatively driven winds. It is shown that the standard WCD model is incapable of representing observed Be star discs. As a guide for future research, various addenda to the WCD model are considered: internal density structure of the disc, decoupling of the matter and radiation fields in the wind and finally magnetic fields. Of these, it is only a magnetic field which may be sufficient as a suffix to bring the WCD model into line with observations. The magnetic field strength must be tens of gauss to begin to reproduce observations.