Line ratios from shocked cloudlets in planetary nebulae

¹ Instituto de Ciencias Nucleares, UNAM, A. Postal 70-543, 04510 México, México e-mail: [raga;esquivel;pablo]@nucleares.unam.mx
² Departament de Física i Enginyeria Nuclear, EUETIB, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Compte d'Urgell 187, 08036 Barcelona, Spain e-mail: angels.riera@upc.edu
³ Departament d'Astronomia i Meteorologia, Universitat de Barcelona, Av. Diagonal 647, 08028 Barcelona, Spain
⁴ Stockholm Observatory, AlbaNova University Centre, Stockholm University, 106 91 Stockholm, Sweden e-mail: garrelt@astro.su.se

Received: 27 November 2007
Accepted: 7 April 2008

Abstract

Context. Some PNe and PPNe show compact knots, travelling at high velocities away from the central sources.

Aims. We compute a number of models from which we obtain predictions of the emission-line spectrum, which can be compared with the spectra of the observed knots.

Methods. We completed a series of 11 axisymmetric simulations of an initially spherical cloudlet, travelling away from a photoionizing source, into a uniform medium. The simulations included a multi-frequency transfer of the ionizing radiation, and a 33 species non-equilibrium ionization network.

Results. From our simulations, we computed emission maps and spatially-integrated emission-line spectra. The predictions show a transition from spectra similar to those of shock wave models (for simulations with lower photoionization rates) to spectra similar to those of photoionized regions (for simulations with higher photoionization rates).

Conclusions. The spectra from our photoionized cloudlet models have a range of line ratios that agree approximately with the observed spectra when shown in two-line ratio diagnostic diagrams. The predicted and observed spatial distributions of the emission (with high ionization lines extending more towards the source than lower ionization lines) agree in a qualitative way.