We study and compare different examples of stellar evolutionary synthesis
input parameters used to produce photoionisation model grids using the MAPPINGS
V modelling code. The aim of this study is to (a) explore the systematic
effects of various stellar evolutionary synthesis model parameters on the
interpretation of emission lines in optical strong-line diagnostic diagrams,
(b) characterise the combination of parameters able to reproduce the spread of
local galaxies located in the star-forming region in the Sloan Digital Sky
Survey, and (c) investigate the emission from extremely metal-poor galaxies
using photoionisation models. We explore and compare the stellar input ionising
spectrum (stellar population synthesis code [Starburst99, SLUG, BPASS], stellar
evolutionary tracks, stellar atmospheres, star-formation history, sampling of
the initial mass function) as well as parameters intrinsic to the H II region
(metallicity, ionisation parameter, pressure, H II region boundedness). We also
perform a comparison of the photoionisation codes MAPPINGS and CLOUDY. On the
variations in the ionising spectrum model parameters, we find that the
differences in strong emission-line ratios between varying models for a given
input model parameter are small, on average ~0.1 dex. An average difference of
~0.1 dex in emission-line ratio is also found between models produced with
MAPPINGS and CLOUDY. Large differences between the emission-line ratios are
found when comparing intrinsic H II region parameters. We find that
low-metallicity galaxies are better explained by a density-bounded H II region
and higher pressures better encompass the spread of galaxies at high redshift.Comment: 33 pages, 26 figures, accepted for publication in Ap
