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

Abstract

We present an adapted version of the code HII-CHI-Mistry-UV (Pérez-Montero & Amorín 2017) 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 CIII] $\lambda$ 1909 Å and OIII] $\lambda$ 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.

arXiv commentAccepted for publication in MNRAS. 16 pages and 10 figures. Tables 2 and 3 will be completely available as supplementary data and submitted to CDS. These tables will be temporarily shared upon request

References in corpus (73)

• The chemical composition of the Sun
• Rest-Frame Ultraviolet Spectra of z~3 Lyman Break Galaxies
• zCOSMOS: A Large VLT/VIMOS redshift survey covering 0 < z < 3 in the COSMOS field
• De Re Metallica: The cosmic chemical evolution of galaxies
• Lyman Break Galaxies at Redshift z~3: Survey Description and Full Data Set
• Strong Nebular Line Ratios in the Spectra of z~2-3 Star-forming Galaxies: First Results from KBSS-MOSFIRE
• The Chandra Deep Field South: Optical Spectroscopy I
• Understanding Galaxy Evolution through Emission Lines
• On The Cosmic Origins Of Carbon And Nitrogen
• The VIMOS Ultra-Deep Survey: ~10,000 galaxies with spectroscopic redshifts to study galaxy assembly at early epochs 2<z<~6
• Modelling the nebular emission from primeval to present-day star-forming galaxies
• Nuclear activity versus star formation: emission-line diagnostics at ultraviolet and optical wavelengths
• The impact of the nitrogen-to-oxygen ratio on ionized nebulae diagnostics based on [NII] emission lines
• The MOSDEF Survey: Excitation Properties of $z\sim 2.3$ Star-forming Galaxies
• Deriving model-based T${}_e$-consistent chemical abundances in ionised gaseous nebulae
• Modelling the Pan-Spectral Energy Distribution of Starburst Galaxies: III. Emission Line Diagnostics of Ensembles of Evolving HII Regions
• Hubble imaging of the ionizing radiation from a star-forming galaxy at z=3.2 with fesc>50%
• Metallicities and Abundance Ratios from Quasar Broad Emission Lines
• Gas Metallicity in the Narrow-Line Regions of High-Redshift Active Galactic Nuclei
• Chandra Detection of a TypeII Quasar at z=3.288
• The VIMOS Ultra Deep Survey: Nature, ISM properties, and ionizing spectra of CIII]1909 emitters at z=2-4
• Chemical Abundance Calibrations for the Narrow-Line-Region of Active Galaxies
• The VANDELS ESO public spectroscopic survey
• X-ray Emission from Optically Selected Radio-Intermediate and Radio-Loud Quasars
• The COS Legacy Archive Spectroscopy SurveY (CLASSY) Treasury Atlas
• GMASS ultradeep spectroscopy of galaxies at z~2 - VII. Sample selection and spectroscopy
• A young star-forming galaxy at z = 3.5 with an extended Ly\,$\alpha$ halo seen with MUSE
• The Nitrogen-to-Oxygen evolution in galaxies: the role of the star formation rate
• Effects of episodic gas infall on the chemical abundances in galaxies
• Spectroscopy of Ultra Steep Spectrum Radio Sources
• Synthetic nebular emission from massive galaxies II: ultraviolet-line diagnostics of dominant ionizing sources
• The Mean Ultraviolet Spectrum of a Representative Sample of Faint z~3 Lyman Alpha Emitters
• Chemical Evolution of High-Redshift Radio Galaxies
• The properties of He II 1640 emitters at z ~ 2.5-5 from the VANDELS survey
• NICMOS Imaging of the Dusty Microjansky Radio Source VLA J123642+621331 at z = 4.424
• A 98% spectroscopically complete sample of the most powerful equatorial radio sources at 408 MHz
• Metallicity evolution of AGNs from UV emission-lines based on a new index
• The VIMOS Ultra-Deep Survey: evidence for AGN feedback in galaxies with CIII]-$\lambda$1908Å~emission 10.8 to 12.5 Gyr ago
• The Magellan Evolution of Galaxies Spectroscopic and Ultraviolet Reference Atlas (MEGaSaURA) I: The Sample and the Spectra
• Obscured AGN at 1.5 < z < 3.0 from the zCOSMOS-deep Survey I. Properties of the emitting gas in the Narrow Line Region
• Strong Lyman continuum emitting galaxies show intense CIV 1550 emission
• Stellar and nebular diagnostics in the UV for star-forming galaxies
• Keck Observations of the Most Distant Galaxy: 8C1435+63 at z=4.25
• Optical spectroscopy of two overlapping, flux-density-limited samples of radio sources in the North Ecliptic Cap, selected at 38 MHz and 151 MHz
• The MUSE Hubble Ultra Deep Field Survey: IV. Global properties of C III] emitters
• On the central abundances of Active Galactic Nuclei and Star-forming Galaxies
• A bayesian-like approach to derive chemical abundances in Type-2 Active Galactic Nuclei based on photoionization models
• New High-Redshift Radio Galaxies from the MIT-Green Bank Catalog
• The mass-metallicity relation of local active galaxies
• Deep spectroscopy of distant 3CR radio galaxies: the data
• The chemical properties of low-redshift QSOs
• Chemical abundances of Seyfert 2 AGNs I. Comparing oxygen abundances from distinct methods using SDSS
• New quantitative nitrogen abundance estimations in a sample of Seyfert 2 Active Galactic Nuclei
• The mass-metallicity relation of high-z type-2 active galactic nuclei
• New metallicity calibration for Seyfert 2 galaxies based on the N2O2 index
• Simulating and interpreting deep observations in the Hubble Ultra Deep Field with the JWST/NIRSpec low-resolution 'prism'
• Strong C IV emission from star-forming galaxies: a case for high Lyman continuum photon escape
• The MUSE Hubble Ultra Deep Field Survey. XV. The mean rest-UV spectra of Ly-alpha emitters at z>3
• Carbon and Nitrogen Abundance Ratio In the Broad Line Region of Tidal Disruption Events
• The UV radiation from $z\sim 2.5$ radio galaxies: Keck spectropolarimetry of 4C 23.56 and 4C 00.54
• Semi-empirical metallicity calibrations based on ultraviolet emission lines of type-2 AGNs
• Imaging and Spectroscopy of Ultra Steep Spectrum Radio Sources
• Using photo-ionisation models to derive carbon and oxygen gas-phase abundances in the rest UV
• The peculiar emission line spectra of core-Extremely Red BOSS Quasars at $z\sim$2-3: orientation and/or evolution?
• A comparison of UV and optical metallicities in star-forming galaxies
• Recovery and analysis of rest-frame UV emission lines in 2052 galaxies observed with MUSE at $1.5<z<6.4$
• Chemical abundances of Seyfert 2 AGNs IV. Composite models calculated by photoionization + shocks
• Measuring Chemical Abundances with Infrared Nebular Lines: HII-Chi-mistry-IR
• A Comparison of Rest-frame Ultraviolet and Optical Emission-Line Diagnostics in the Lensed Galaxy SDSS J1723+3411 at Redshift z=1.3293
• Measuring chemical abundances in AGN from infrared nebular lines: HII-CHI-Mistry-IR for AGN
• Young stars and non-stellar emission in the aligned radio galaxy 3C 256
• A Peculiar Type~II QSO Identified via Broad-band Detection of Extreme Nebular Line Emission
• Spectroscopy of an extreme [OIII] emitting active galactic nucleus at $z=3.212$: implications for the reionisation era

Cited by in corpus (2)

• Ionized gas kinematics and chemical abundances of low-mass star-forming galaxies at $z\sim 3$
• Cosmic Ray Ionization of Low-Excitation Lines in Active Galactic Nuclei and Starburst Galaxies