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Accurate oxygen abundance of interstellar gas in Mrk 71 from optical and infrared spectra

Nature Astronomy volume 7, pages 771–778 (2023)Cite this article

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Abstract

The heavy element content (‘metallicity’) of the Universe is a record of the total star formation history. Gas-phase metallicity in galaxies, as well as its evolution with time, is of particular interest as a tracer of accretion and outflow processes. However, metallicities from the widely used electron temperature (Te) method are typically approximately two times lower than the values based on the recombination line method. This ‘abundance discrepancy factor’ is well known and is commonly ascribed to bias due to temperature fluctuations. We present a measurement of oxygen abundance in the nearby (3.4-Mpc) system, Markarian 71, using a combination of optical and far-infrared emission lines to measure and correct for temperature fluctuation effects. Our far-infrared result is inconsistent (>2σ significance) with the metallicity from recombination lines and, instead, indicates little to no bias in the standard Te method, ruling out the long-standing hypothesis that the abundance discrepancy factor is explained by temperature fluctuations for this object. Our results provide a framework to accurately measure metallicity across cosmic history, including with recent data reaching within the first billion years, with the James Webb Space Telescope and the Atacama Large Millimeter Array.

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Fig. 1: Overview of our spectroscopic datasets on Mrk 71.
Fig. 2: A summary of spectra we obtained for Mrk 71.
Fig. 3: A summary of the electron temperature and O++ abundace of Mrk 71 measured from different direct methods.

Data availability

The raw Keck Cosmic Web Imager data in this work are available in the Keck Observatory Archive: https://www2.keck.hawaii.edu/koa/public/koa.php. The reduced Far Infrared Field-Imaging Line Spectrometer data are available in the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy data archive: https://irsa.ipac.caltech.edu/Missions/sofia.html. The Photodetector Array Camera and Spectrometer data before transient correction are available in the Herschel data archive: http://archives.esac.esa.int/hsa/whsa/. Additional data can be provided upon reasonable request.

Code availability

This study uses publicly available software/packages, including PyNeb43, Astropy47, emcee48, the Keck Cosmic Web Imager Data Reduction Pipeline (https://github.com/Keck-DataReductionPipelines/KCWI_DRP.git), SOSPEX (https://github.com/darioflute/sospex), Montage (http://montage.ipac.caltech.edu) and the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy Data Reduction Pipeline (https://github.com/SOFIA-USRA/sofia_redux). For the Keck Cosmic Web Imager data, the post-Data Reduction Pipeline background subtraction and stacking code is maintained at https://github.com/yuguangchen1/kcwi. Additional analysis code can be provided upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

This work was based on data obtained at the W. M. Keck Observatory, which is operated as a scientific partnership among the California Institute of Technology, the University of California and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The observatory was made possible by the generous financial support of the W. M. Keck Foundation. We recognize and acknowledge the very significant cultural role and reverence that the summit of Maunakea has always had within the indigenous Hawaiian community. We are fortunate to have the opportunity to conduct observations from this mountain. Results in this paper are based on observations made with the NASA/DLR Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA). SOFIA is jointly operated by the Universities Space Research Association, Inc. (NASA Contract NAS2-97001) and the Deutsches SOFIA Institut (DLR Contract 50-OK-0901 to the University of Stuttgart). Herschel is an ESA space observatory with science instruments provided by a European-led principal investigator consortia and important participation from NASA. We thank the W. M. Keck Observatory staff, the SOFIA observatory staff and the Herschel Data Archive for making this study possible. Financial support for this work was provided by NASA (Award 08_0071 issued by the Universities Space Research Association, Inc.). R.S. acknowledges the support of NASA (NASA Hubble Fellowship Grant HST-HF2-51469.001-A awarded by the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Incorporated (NASA Contract NAS5-26555)). J. Sutter acknowledges funding from STScI (Grant JWST-GO-02107.006.A). R.M. acknowledges support from the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, which is a facility of the National Science Foundation operated under cooperative agreement with Associated Universities, Inc.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics & Astronomy, University of California, Davis, CA, USA

    Yuguang Chen, Tucker Jones, Ryan Sanders & Erin Huntzinger

  2. Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy Science Center, National Aeronautics and Space Administration Ames Research Center, Mountain View, CA, USA

    Dario Fadda, Jessica Sutter & Robert Minchin

  3. Center for Astrophysics and Space Sciences, Department of Physics, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA

    Jessica Sutter

  4. Pete V. Domenici Science Operations Center, National Radio Astronomy Observatory, Socorro, NM, USA

    Robert Minchin

  5. The Observatories of the Carnegie Institution for Science, Pasadena, CA, USA

    Peter Senchyna

  6. Steward Observatory, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA

    Daniel Stark & Benjamin Weiner

  7. Department of Physics and Astronomy and George P. and Cynthia Woods Mitchell Institute for Fundamental Physics and Astronomy, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA

    Justin Spilker

  8. Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA

    Guido Roberts-Borsani

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Contributions

Y.C. led the overall data reduction, analysis and interpretation of the project. T.J. and R.S. conceived the project. Y.C. conducted the Keck Cosmic Web Imager data reduction and analysis. D.F. conducted the Far Infrared Field-Imaging Line Spectrometer data reduction. D.F., J. Sutter and R.M. contributed to the improvement of the Photodetector Array Camera and Spectrometer data. All authors contributed to the planning of the observations, the overall interpretation of the results, various aspects of analysis and the preparation of the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Yuguang Chen.

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Nature Astronomy thanks Mirko Curti, Rolf Kudritzki and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Supplementary Figs. 1–4 and Tables 1 and 2.

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Chen, Y., Jones, T., Sanders, R. et al. Accurate oxygen abundance of interstellar gas in Mrk 71 from optical and infrared spectra. Nat Astron 7, 771–778 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-023-01953-7

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