| Issue |
A&A
Volume 685, May 2024
|
|
|---|---|---|
| Article Number | A168 | |
| Number of page(s) | 15 | |
| Section | Extragalactic astronomy | |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/202348318 | |
| Published online | 22 May 2024 | |
Chemical abundances and deviations from the solar S/O ratio in the gas-phase interstellar medium of galaxies based on infrared emission lines⋆
1
Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (IAA-CSIC), Glorieta de la Astronomía s/n, 18008 Granada, Spain
e-mail: bperez@iaa.es
2
Centro de Estudios de Física del Cosmos de Aragón (CEFCA), Unidad Asociada al CSIC, Plaza San Juan 1, 44001 Teruel, Spain
Received:
19
October
2023
Accepted:
4
March
2024
Context. The infrared (IR) range is extremely useful in the context of chemical abundance studies of the gas-phase interstellar medium (ISM) due to the large variety of ionic species traced in this regime, the negligible effects from dust attenuation or temperature stratification, and the amount of data that has been and will be released in the coming years.
Aims. Taking advantage of available IR emission lines, we analysed the chemical content of the gas-phase ISM in a sample of 131 star-forming galaxies (SFGs) and 73 active galactic nuclei (AGNs). In particular, we derived the chemical content via their total oxygen abundance in combination with nitrogen and sulphur abundances, and with the ionisation parameter.
Methods. We used a new version of the code HII-CHI-MISTRY-IR v3.1, which allowed us to estimate log(N/O), 12+log(O/H), log(U) and, for the first time, 12+log(S/H) from IR emission lines, which can be applied to both SFGs and AGNs. We tested whether the estimates from this new version, which only considers sulphur lines for the derivation of sulphur abundances, are compatible with previous studies.
Results. While most of the SFGs and AGNs show solar log(N/O) abundances, we find a large spread in the log(S/O) relative abundances. Specifically, we find extremely low log(S/O) values (1/10 solar) in some SFGs and AGNs with solar-like oxygen abundances. This result warns against the use of optical and IR sulphur emission lines to estimate oxygen abundances when no prior estimation of log(S/O) is provided.
Key words: galaxies: abundances / galaxies: active / galaxies: ISM / galaxies: nuclei / infrared: ISM
Full Tables A.1–A.4 are available at the CDS via anonymous ftp to cdsarc.cds.unistra.fr (130.79.128.5) or via https://cdsarc.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/cat/J/A+A/685/A168
© The Authors 2024
Open Access article, published by EDP Sciences, under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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