882 research outputs found
Near-Infrared Spectroscopy of 0.4<z<1.0 CFRS Galaxies: Oxygen Abundances, SFRs and Dust
Using new J-band VLT-ISAAC and Keck-NIRSPEC spectroscopy, we have measured
Halpha and [NII] line fluxes for 0.47<z<0.92 CFRS galaxies which have [OII],
Hbeta and [OIII]a line fluxes available from optical spectroscopy, to
investigate how the properties of the star forming gas in galaxies evolve with
redshift. We derive the extinction and oxygen abundances for the sample using a
method based on a set of ionisation parameter and oxygen abundance diagnostics,
simultaneously fitting the [OII], Hbeta,[OIII], Halpha, and [NII] line fluxes.
The individual reddening measurements allow us to accurately correct the
Halpha-based star formation rate (SFR) estimates for extinction. Our most
salient conclusions are: a) in all 30 CFRS galaxies the source of gas
ionisation is not due to AGN activity; b) we find a range of 0<AV<3, suggesting
that it is important to determine the extinction for every single galaxy in
order to reliably measure SFRs and oxygen abundances in high redshift galaxies;
c) high values of [NII]/Halpha >0.1 for most (but not all) of the CFRS galaxies
indicate that they lie on the high-metallicity branch of the R23 calibration;
d) about one third of the 0.47<z<0.92 CFRS galaxies in our sample have lower
metallicities than local galaxies with similar luminosities and star formation
rates; e) comparison with a chemical evolution model indicates that these low
metallicity galaxies are unlikely to be the progenitors of metal-poor dwarf
galaxies at z~0.Comment: Accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journa
Physical Conditions of Accreting Gas in T Tauri Star Systems
We present results from a low resolution (R~300) near-infrared spectroscopic
variability survey of actively accreting T Tauri stars (TTS) in the
Taurus-Auriga star forming region. Paschen and Brackett series H I
recombination lines were detected in 73 spectra of 15 classical T Tauri
systems. The values of the Pan/PaB, Brn/BrG, and BrG/Pan H I line ratios for
all observations exhibit a scatter of < 20% about the weighted mean, not only
from source to source, but also for epoch-to-epoch variations in the same
source. A representative or `global' value was determined for each ratio in
both the Paschen and Brackett series as well as the BrG/Pan line ratios. A
comparison of observed line ratio values was made to those predicted by the
temperature and electron density dependent models of Case B hydrogen
recombination line theory. The measured line ratios are statistically well-fit
by a tightly constrained range of temperatures (T < 2000 K) and electron
densities 1e9 < n_e < 1e10 cm^-3. A comparison of the observed line ratio
values to the values predicted by the optically thick and thin local
thermodynamic equilibrium cases rules out these conditions for the emitting H I
gas. Therefore, the emission is consistent with having an origin in a non-LTE
recombining gas. While the range of electron densities is consistent with the
gas densities predicted by existing magnetospheric accretion models, the
temperature range constrained by the Case B comparison is considerably lower
than that expected for accreting gas. The cooler gas temperatures will require
a non-thermal excitation process (e.g., coronal/accretion-related X-rays and UV
photons) to power the observed line emission.Comment: 12 pages, emulateapj format, Accepted for publication in Ap
Temperature Fluctuations and Abundances in HII Galaxies
There is evidence for temperature fluctuations in Planetary Nebulae and in
Galactic HII regions. If such fluctuations occur in the low-metallicity,
extragalactic HII regions used to probe the primordial helium abundance, the
derived 4He mass fraction, Y_P, could be systematically different from the true
primordial value. For cooler, mainly high-metallicity HII regions the derived
helium abundance may be nearly unchanged but the oxygen abundance could have
been seriously underestimated. For hotter, mainly low-metallicity HII regions
the oxygen abundance is likely accurate but the helium abundance could be
underestimated. The net effect is to tilt the Y vs. Z relation, making it
flatter and resulting in a higher inferred Y_P. Although this effect could be
large, there are no data which allow us to estimate the size of the temperature
fluctuations for the extragalactic HII regions. Therefore, we have explored
this effect via Monte Carlos in which the abundances derived from a fiducial
data set are modified by \Delta-T chosen from a distribution with 0 < \Delta-T
< \Delta-T_max where \Delta-T_max is varied from 500K to 4000K. It is
interesting that although this effect shifts the locations of the HII regions
in Y vs. O/H plane, it does not introduce any significant additional
dispersion.Comment: 11 pages, 9 postscript figures; submitted to the Ap
Emission-line Helium Abundances in Highly Obscured Nebulae
This paper outlines a way to determine the ICF using only infrared data. We
identify four line pairs, [NeIII] 36\micron/[NeII] 12.8\micron,
[NeIII]~15.6\micron /[NeII] 12.8\micron, [ArIII] 9\micron/[ArII]
6.9\micron, and [ArIII] 21\micron/[ArII] 6.9\micron, that are sensitive
to the He ICF. This happens because the ions cover a wide range of ionization,
the line pairs are not sensitive to electron temperature, they have similar
critical densities, and are formed within the He/H region of the
nebula. We compute a very wide range of photoionization models appropriate for
galactic HII regions. The models cover a wide range of densities, ionization
parameters, stellar temperatures, and use continua from four very different
stellar atmospheres.
The results show that each line pair has a critical intensity ratio above
which the He ICF is always small. Below these values the ICF depends very
strongly on details of the models for three of the ratios, and so other
information would be needed to determine the helium abundance. The [Ar III]
9\micron/[ArII] 6.9\micron ratio can indicate the ICF directly due to the
near exact match in the critical densities of the two lines. Finally, continua
predicted by the latest generation of stellar atmospheres are sufficiently hard
that they routinely produce significantly negative ICFs.Comment: Accepted by PASP. Scheduled for the October 1999 issue. 11 pages, 5
figure
Planetary Nebula Abundances and Morphology: Probing the Chemical Evolution of the Milky Way
This paper presents a homogeneous study of abundances in a sample of 79
northern galactic planetary nebulae whose morphological classes have been
uniformly determined. Ionic abundances and plasma diagnostics were derived from
selected optical line strengths in the literature, and elemental abundances
were estimated with the Ionization Correction Factor developed by Kingsbourgh &
Barlow (1994). We compare the elemental abundances to the final yields obtained
from stellar evolution models of low-and intermediate-mass stars, and we
confirm that most Bipolar planetary nebulae have high nitrogen and helium
abundance, and are the likely progeny of stars with main-sequence mass larger
than 3 solar masses. We derive =0.27, and discuss the implication of such
a high ratio in connection with the solar neon abundance. We determine the
galactic gradients of oxygen and neon, and found Delta log (O/H)/Delta R=-0.01
dex/kpc$ and Delta log (Ne/H)/Delta R=-0.01 dex/kpc. These flat PN gradients do
not reconcile with galactic metallicity gradients flattening with time.Comment: The Astrophysical Journal, in pres
The effect of collisional enhancement of Balmer lines on the determination of the primordial helium abundance
This paper describes a new determination of the primordial helium abundance
(Y_P), based on the abundance analysis of five metal-poor extragalactic HII
regions. For three regions of the sample (SBS 0335-052, I Zw 18, and H29) we
present tailored photoionization models based on improved calculations with
respect to previous models. In particular, we use the photoionization models to
study quantitatively the effect of collisional excitation of Balmer lines on
the determination of the helium abundance (Y) in the individual regions. This
effect is twofold: first, the intensities of the Balmer lines are enhanced with
respect to the pure recombination value, mimicking a higher hydrogen abundance;
second, the observed reddening is larger than the true extinction, due to the
differential effect of collisions on different Balmer lines. In addition to
these effects, our analysis takes into account the following features of HII
regions: (i) the temperature structure, (ii) the density structure, (iii) the
presence of neutral helium, (iv) the collisional excitation of the HeI lines,
(v) the underlying absorption of the HeI lines, and (vi) the optical thickness
of the HeI lines. The object that shows the highest increase in Y after the
inclusion of collisional effects in the analysis is SBS 0335-052, whose helium
abundance has been revised by Delta Y = +0.0107. The revised Y values for the
five objects in our sample yield an increase of +0.0035 in Y_P, giving Y_P =
0.2391 +/- 0.0020.Comment: 59 pages, 8 figures. AAS Latex. Accepted for publication in the
Astrophysical Journa
The Primordial Abundance of He4: An Update
We include new data in an updated analysis of helium in low metallicity
extragalactic HII regions with the goal of deriving the primordial abundance of
He4 (Y_P). We show that the new observations of Izotov et al (ITL) are
consistent with previous data. However they should not be taken in isolation to
determine (Y_P) due to the lack of sufficiently low metallicity points. We use
the extant data in a semi-empirical approach to bounding the size of possible
systematic uncertainties in the determination of (Y_P). Our best estimate for
the primordial abundance of He4 assuming a linear relation between He4 and O/H
is Y_P = 0.230 \pm 0.003 (stat) based on the subset of HII regions with the
lowest metallicity; for our full data set we find Y_P = 0.234 \pm 0.002 (stat).
Both values are entirely consistent with our previous results. We discuss the
implications of these values for standard big bang nucleosynthesis (SBBN),
particularly in the context of recent measurements of deuterium in high
redshift, low metallicity QSO absorption-line systems.Comment: 26 pages, latex, 6 ps figure
Improving Predictions for Helium Emission Lines
We have combined the detailed He I recombination model of Smits with the
collisional transitions of Sawey & Berrington in order to produce new accurate
helium emissivities that include the effects of collisional excitation from
both the 2 (3)S and 2 (1) S levels. We present a grid of emissivities for a
range of temperature and densities along with analytical fits and error
estimates.
Fits accurate to within 1% are given for the emissivities of the brightest
lines over a restricted range for estimates of primordial helium abundance. We
characterize the analysis uncertainties associated with uncertainties in
temperature, density, fitting functions, and input atomic data. We estimate
that atomic data uncertainties alone may limit abundance estimates to an
accuracy of 1.5%; systematic errors may be greater than this. This analysis
uncertainty must be incorporated when attempting to make high accuracy
estimates of the helium abundance. For example, in recent determinations of the
primordial helium abundance, uncertainties in the input atomic data have been
neglected.Comment: ApJ, accepte
The young age of the extremely metal-deficient blue compact dwarf galaxy SBS 1415+437
We use Multiple Mirror Telescope (MMT) spectrophotometry and Hubble Space
Telescope (HST) Faint Object Spectrograph (FOS) spectra and Wide Field and
Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) V and I images to study the properties and
evolutionary status of the nearby (D = 11.4 Mpc) extremely metal-deficient blue
compact dwarf (BCD) galaxy SBS 1415+437=CG 389. The oxygen abundance in the
galaxy is 12+log(O/H)=7.60+/-0.01 or Zsun/21. The helium mass fraction in SBS
1415+437 is Y=0.246+/-0.004 which agrees with the primordial helium abundance
determined by Izotov & Thuan using a much larger sample of BCDs. The
alpha-elements-to-oxygen abundance ratios (Ne/O, S/O, Ar/O) are in very good
agreement with the mean values for other metal-deficient BCDs and are
consistent with the scenario that these elements are made in massive stars. The
Fe/O abundance ratio is ~2 times smaller than the solar ratio. The Si/O ratio
is close to the solar value, implying that silicon is not significantly
depleted into dust grains. The values of the N/O and C/O ratios imply that
intermediate-mass stars have not had time to evolve in SBS 1415+437 and release
their nucleosynthesis products and that both N and C in the BCD have been made
by massive stars only. This sets an upper limit of ~100 Myr on the age of SBS
1415+437. The (V-I) color of the low-surface-brightness component of the galaxy
is blue (<0.4 mag) indicative of a very young underlying stellar population.
The (V-I) - I color-magnitude diagrams of the resolved stellar populations in
different regions of SBS 1415+437 suggest propagating star formation from the
NE side of the galaxy to the SW. All regions in SBS 1415+437 possess very blue
spectral energy distributions (SED). We find that the ages of the stellar
populations in SBS 1415+437 to range from a few Myr to 100 Myr.Comment: 25 pages, 12 PS and 5 JPG figures, to appear in Ap
A Lyman alpha emitter at z = 6.5 found with slitless spectroscopy
We report the discovery of a Lyman alpha emitting galaxy at z = 6.518. The
single line was found in the 43 square arcmin VLT/FORS field by slitless
spectroscopy limited to the atmospheric window at 9100 A (sampling Lya at 6.4 <
z < 6.6). Its counterpart is undetected in a deep I band image and the line has
an asymmetric appearance in a deeper follow-up spectrum. There are no plausible
line identifications except for Lya with a flux of 1.9x10^-17 erg/s/cm2 and
rest frame equivalent width > 80 A. The lower limit to the star formation rate
density at z = 6.5 derived from our complete sample is 5x10^-4
M_sol/year/Mpc^3, consistent with measurements in the Subaru Deep Field and
Hubble Ultra Deep Field but approximately ten times higher than in the Large
Area Lyman Alpha survey. This Lya emitter is among the very small sample of
highest redshift galaxies known.Comment: Accepted as Letter by A&A, 5 pages, 7 figures, one typo correcte
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