Chemical enrichment in LINERs from MaNGA

I. Tracing the nuclear abundances of oxygen and nitrogen in LINERs with varied ionizing sources

¹ Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (IAA-CSIC), Glorieta de la Astronomía s/n, 18008 Granada, Spain
² Faculty of Physics, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Scheinerstr. 1, 81679 Munich, Germany
³ Main Astronomical Observatory, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, 27 Akad. Zabolotnoho St, 03680 Kyiv, Ukraine

^⋆ Corresponding author; bperez@iaa.es

Received: 4 November 2024
Accepted: 22 November 2024

Abstract

Context. The chemical enrichment in low-ionization nuclear emission-line regions (LINERs) is still an issue with spatial resolution spectroscopic data because we lack studies and because the nature of their ionizing source is uncertain, although they are the most abundant type of active galaxies in the nearby Universe.

Aims. Considering different scenarios for the ionizing source (hot old stellar populations, active galactic nuclei, or inefficient accretion disks), we analyze the implications of these assumptions to constrain the chemical content of the gas-phase interstellar medium.

Methods. We used a sample of 105 galaxies from the survey called Mapping Nearby Galaxies at Apache Point Observatory (MaNGA), whose nuclear central spaxels show LINER-like emission. For each scenario we considered, we built a grid of photoionization models (4928 models for each considered ionizing source) that were later used in the open-source code HII-CHI-MISTRY. This allowed us to estimate chemical abundance ratios such as 12+log(O/H) or log(N/O) and to constrain the ionization parameters that characterize the ionized interstellar medium in these galaxies.

Results. The oxygen abundances in the nuclear region of LINER-like galaxies are spread over a wide range 8.08 < 12+log(O/H) < 8.89, with a median solar value (in agreement with previous studies) when models for active galactic nuclei are considered. Nevertheless, the nitrogen-to-oxygen ratio we derived is much less affected by the assumptions on the ionizing source and indicates suprasolar values (log(N/O) = −0.69). By comparing the different scenarios, we show that if hot old stellar populations caused the ionization of the interstellar medium, a complex picture (e.g., outflows and/or inflows that scale with the galaxy chemical abundance) would be needed to explain the chemical enrichment history, whereas the assumption of active galactic nucleus activity is compatible with the standard scenario that is found in most galaxies.