Assessing model-based carbon and oxygen abundance derivation from ultraviolet emission lines in AGNs

We present an adapted version of the code HII-CHI-MISTRY-UV to derive chemical abundances from emission lines in the ultraviolet, for use in narrow line regions (NLR) of active galactic nuclei (AGN). We evaluate different ultraviolet emission line ratios and how different assumptions about the model...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Pérez Montero, Enrique, Amorín, R., Pérez-Díaz, B., Vílchez Medina, José Manuel, García-Benito, Rubén
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Estado:Versión publicada
Fecha de publicación:2023
País:España
Institución:Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC)
Repositorio:DIGITAL.CSIC. Repositorio Institucional del CSIC
OAI Identifier:oai:digital.csic.es:10261/356940
Acceso en línea:http://hdl.handle.net/10261/356940
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Galaxies: abundances
Galaxies: active
Galaxies: evolution
Galaxies: ISM
Galaxies: nuclei
Galaxies: Seyfert
Descripción
Sumario:We present an adapted version of the code HII-CHI-MISTRY-UV to derive chemical abundances from emission lines in the ultraviolet, for use in narrow line regions (NLR) of active galactic nuclei (AGN). We evaluate different ultraviolet emission line ratios and how different assumptions about the models, including the presence of dust grains, the shape of the incident spectral energy distribution, or the thickness of the gas envelope around the central source, may affect the final estimates as a function of the set of emission lines used. We compare our results with other published recipes for deriving abundances using the same emission lines and show that deriving the carbon-to-oxygen abundance ratio using C III] λ 1909 Å and O III] λ 1665 Å emission lines is a robust indicator of the metal content in AGN that is nearly independent of the model assumptions, similar to the case of star-forming regions. Moreover, we show that a prior determination of C/O allows for a much more precise determination of the total oxygen abundance using carbon UV lines, as opposed to assuming an arbitrary relationship between O/H and C/O, which can lead to non-negligible discrepancies. © 2023 The Author(s) Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Royal Astronomical Society.