Issue |
A&A
Volume 471, Number 1, August III 2007
|
|
---|---|---|
Page(s) | 193 - 204 | |
Section | Interstellar and circumstellar matter | |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361:20065675 | |
Published online | 06 June 2007 |
Enrichment of the interstellar medium by metal-rich droplets and the abundance bias in H ii regions
1
LUTH, Observatoire de Paris, CNRS, Université Paris Diderot, Place Jules Janssen, 92190 Meudon, France e-mail: grazyna.stasinska@obspm.fr
2
Instituto Nacional de Astrofísica Óptica y Electrónica, AP 51, 72000 Puebla, Mexico
3
Centro de Radioastronomía y Astrofísica, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Campus Morelia, Apartado Postal 3-72, 58090 Morelia, Mexico
Received:
23
May
2006
Accepted:
25
May
2007
We critically examine a scenario for the enrichment of the interstellar medium (ISM) in which supernova ejecta follow a long (108 yr) journey before falling back onto the galactic disk in the form of metal-rich “droplets”, These droplets do not become fully mixed with the interstellar medium until they become photoionized in H ii regions. We investigate the hypothesis that the photoionization of these highly metallic droplets can explain the observed “abundance discrepancy factors” (ADFs), which are found when comparing abundances derived from recombination lines and from collisionally excited lines, both in Galactic and extragalactic H ii regions. We derive bounds of 1013–1015 cm on the droplet sizes inside H ii regions in order that (1) they should not have already been detected by direct imaging of nearby nebulae, and (2) they should not be too swiftly destroyed by diffusion in the ionized gas. From photoionization modelling we find that, if this inhomogeneous enrichment scenario holds, then the recombination lines strongly overestimate the metallicities of the fully mixed H ii regions. The abundances derived from collisionally excited lines also suffer some bias, although to a much lesser extent. In the absence of any recipe for correcting these biases, we recommend the discarding of all objects showing large ADFs from studies of galactic chemical evolution. These biases must also be kept in mind when comparing the galactic abundance gradients for elements derived from recombination lines with those derived from collisionally excited lines. Finally, we propose a set of observations that could be undertaken to test our scenario and improve our understanding of element mixing in the ISM.
Key words: galaxies: abundances / galaxies: ISM / ISM: abundances / ISM: H ii regions
© ESO, 2007
Current usage metrics show cumulative count of Article Views (full-text article views including HTML views, PDF and ePub downloads, according to the available data) and Abstracts Views on Vision4Press platform.
Data correspond to usage on the plateform after 2015. The current usage metrics is available 48-96 hours after online publication and is updated daily on week days.
Initial download of the metrics may take a while.