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Register a new userFar-Infrared Line Diagnostics: Improving N/O Abundance Estimates for Dusty Galaxies
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The Nitrogen-to-Oxygen (N/O) abundance ratio is an important diagnostic of galaxy evolution since the ratio is closely tied to the growth of metallicity and the star formation history in galaxies. Estimates for the N/O ratio are traditionally accomplished with optical lines that could suffer from extinction and excitation effects, so the N/O ratio is arguably measured better through far-infrared (far-IR) fine-structure lines. Here we show that the [N III]57$mu$m/[O III]52$mu$m line ratio, denoted $N3O3$, is a physically robust probe of N/O. This parameter is insensitive to gas temperature and only weakly dependent on electron density. Though it has a dependence on the hardness of the ionizing radiation field, we show that it is well corrected by including the [Ne III]15.5$mu$m/[Ne II]12.8$mu$m line ratio. We verify the method, and characterize its intrinsic uncertainties by comparing the results to photoionization models. We then apply our method to a sample of nearby galaxies using new observations obtained with SOFIA/FIFI-LS in combination with available Herschel/PACS data, and the results are compared with optical N/O estimates. We find evidence for a systematic offset between the far-IR and optically derived N/O ratio. We argue this is likely due to that our far-IR method is biased towards younger and denser H II regions, while the optical methods are biased towards older H II regions as well as diffuse ionized gas. This work provides a local template for studies of ISM abundance in the early Universe.
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We present Herschel observations of six fine-structure lines in 25 Ultraluminous Infrared Galaxies at z<0.27. The lines, [O III]52, [N III]57, [O I]63, [N II]122, [O I]145, and [C II]158, are mostly single gaussians with widths <600 km s-1 and luminosities of 10^7 - 10^9 Solar. There are deficits in the [O I]63/L_IR, [N II]/L_IR, [O I]145/L_IR, and [C II]/L_IR ratios compared to lower luminosity systems. The majority of the line deficits are consistent with dustier H II regions, but part of the [C II] deficit may arise from an additional mechanism, plausibly charged dust grains. This is consistent with some of the [C II] originating from PDRs or the ISM. We derive relations between far-IR line luminosities and both IR luminosity and star formation rate. We find that [N II] and both [O I] lines are good tracers of IR luminosity and star formation rate. In contrast, [C II] is a poor tracer of IR luminosity and star formation rate, and does not improve as a tracer of either quantity if the [C II] deficit is accounted for. The continuum luminosity densities also correlate with IR luminosity and star formation rate. We derive ranges for the gas density and ultraviolet radiation intensity of 10^1 < n < 10^2.5 and 10^2.2 < G_0 < 10^3.6, respectively. These ranges depend on optical type, the importance of star formation, and merger stage. We do not find relationships between far-IR line properties and several other parameters; AGN activity, merger stage, mid-IR excitation, and SMBH mass. We conclude that these far-IR lines arise from gas heated by starlight, and that they are not strongly influenced by AGN activity.
In an earlier paper we modeled the far-infrared emission from a star-forming galaxy using the photoionisation code CLOUDY and presented metallicity sensitive diagnostics based on far-infrared fine structure line ratios. Here, we focus on the applicability of the [OIII]88/[NII]122 microns line ratio as a gas phase metallicity indicator in high redshift submillimetre luminous galaxies. The [OIII]88/[NII]122 microns ratio is strongly dependent on the ionization parameter (which is related to the total number of ionizing photons) as well as the gas electron density. We demonstrate how the ratio of 88/$122 continuum flux measurements can provide a reasonable estimate of the ionization parameter while the availability of the [NII]205 microns line can constrain the electron density. Using the [OIII]88/[NII]122 microns line ratios from a sample of nearby normal and star-forming galaxies we measure their gas phase metallicities and find that their mass metallicity relation is consistent with the one derived using optical emission lines. Using new, previously unpublished, Herschel spectroscopic observations of key far-infrared fine structure lines of the z~3 galaxy HLSW-01 and additional published measurements of far-infrared fine structure lines of high-z submillimetre luminous galaxies we derive gas phase metallicities using their [OIII]88/[NII]122 microns line ratio. We find that the metallicities of these z~3 submm luminous galaxies are consistent with solar metallicities and that they appear to follow the mass-metallicity relation expected for z~3 systems.
We use the Herschel/PACS spectrometer to study the global and spatially resolved far-infrared (FIR) fine-structure line emission in a sample of 52 galaxies that constitute the SHINING survey. These galaxies include star-forming, active-galactic nuclei (AGN), and luminous infrared galaxies (LIRGs). We find an increasing number of galaxies (and kiloparsec size regions within galaxies) with low line-to-FIR continuum ratios as a function of increasing FIR luminosity ($L_{mathrm{FIR}}$), dust infrared color, $L_{mathrm{FIR}}$ to molecular gas mass ratio ($L_{mathrm{FIR}}/M_{mathrm{mol}}$), and FIR surface brightness ($Sigma_{mathrm{FIR}}$). The correlations between the [CII]/FIR or [OI]/FIR ratios with $Sigma_{mathrm{FIR}}$ are remarkably tight ($sim0.3$ dex scatter over almost four orders of magnitude in $Sigma_{mathrm{FIR}}$). We observe that galaxies with $L_{mathrm{FIR}}/M_{mathrm{mol}} gtrsim 80,L_{odot},M_{odot}^{-1}$ and $Sigma_{mathrm{FIR}}gtrsim10^{11}$ $L_{odot}$ kpc$^{-2}$ tend to have weak fine-structure line-to-FIR continuum ratios, and that LIRGs with infrared sizes $gtrsim1$ kpc have line-to-FIR ratios comparable to those observed in typical star-forming galaxies. We analyze the physical mechanisms driving these trends in Paper II (Herrera-Camus et al. 2018). The combined analysis of the [CII], [NII], and [OIII] lines reveals that the fraction of the [CII] line emission that arises from neutral gas increases from 60% to 90% in the most active star-forming regions and that the emission originating in the ionized gas is associated with low-ionization, diffuse gas rather than with dense gas in HII regions. Finally, we report the global and spatially resolved line fluxes of the SHINING galaxies to enable the comparison and planning of future local and high-$z$ studies.
We present an analysis of [OI]63, [OIII]88, [NII]122 and [CII]158 far-infrared (FIR) fine-structure line observations obtained with Herschel/PACS, for ~240 local luminous infrared galaxies (LIRGs) in the Great Observatories All-sky LIRG Survey (GOALS). We find pronounced declines -deficits- of line-to-FIR-continuum emission for [NII]122, [OI]63 and [CII]158 as a function of FIR color and infrared luminosity surface density, $Sigma_{rm IR}$. The median electron density of the ionized gas in LIRGs, based on the [NII]122/[NII]205 ratio, is $n_{rm e}$ = 41 cm$^{-3}$. We find that the dispersion in the [CII]158 deficit of LIRGs is attributed to a varying fractional contribution of photo-dissociation-regions (PDRs) to the observed [CII]158 emission, f([CII]PDR) = [CII]PDR/[CII], which increases from ~60% to ~95% in the warmest LIRGs. The [OI]63/[CII]158PDR ratio is tightly correlated with the PDR gas kinetic temperature in sources where [OI]63 is not optically-thick or self-absorbed. For each galaxy, we derive the average PDR hydrogen density, $n_{rm H}$, and intensity of the interstellar radiation field, in units of G$_0$, and find G$_0$/$n_{rm H}$ ratios ~0.1-50 cm$^3$, with ULIRGs populating the upper end of the distribution. There is a relation between G$_0$/$n_{rm H}$ and $Sigma_{rm IR}$, showing a critical break at $Sigma_{rm IR}^{star}$ ~ 5 x 10$^{10}$ Lsun/kpc$^2$. Below $Sigma_{rm IR}^{star}$, G$_0$/$n_{rm H}$ remains constant, ~0.32 cm$^3$, and variations in $Sigma_{rm IR}$ are driven by the number density of star-forming regions within a galaxy, with no change in their PDR properties. Above $Sigma_{rm IR}^{star}$, G$_0$/$n_{rm H}$ increases rapidly with $Sigma_{rm IR}$, signaling a departure from the typical PDR conditions found in normal star-forming galaxies towards more intense/harder radiation fields and compact geometries typical of starbursting sources.
We revisit the nature of the FIR/Radio correlation by means of the most recent models for star forming galaxies. We model the IR emission with our population synthesis code, GRASIL (Silva et al. 1998). As for the radio emission, we revisit the simple model of Condon & Yin (1990). We find that a tightFIR/Radio correlation is natural when the synchrotron mechanism dominates over the inverse Compton, and the electrons cooling time is shorter than the fading time of the supernova rate. Observations indicate that both these conditions are met in star forming galaxies. However since the radio non thermal emission is delayed, deviations are expected both in the early phases of a starburst, when the radio thermal component dominates, and in the post-starburst phase, when the bulk of the NT component originates from less massive stars. This delay allows the analysis of obscured starbursts with a time resolution of a few tens of Myrs, unreachable with other star formation indicators. We suggest to complement the analysis of the deviations from the FIR/Radio correlation with the radio slope to obtain characteristic parameters of the burst. The analysis of a sample of compact ULIRGs shows that they are intense but transient starbursts, to which one should not apply usual SF indicators devised for constant SF rates. We also discuss the possibility of using the q- radio slope diagram to asses the presence of obscured AGN. A firm prediction of the models is an apparent radio excess during the post-starburst phase, which seems to be typical of a class of star forming galaxies in rich cluster cores. We discuss how deviations from the correlation, due to the evolutionary status of the starburst, affect the technique of photometric redshift determination widely used for high-z sources.
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