The Calibration of the O/H Abundance Indicators for Extragalactic H II Regions based on O II Recombination Lines

Peimbert, M.; Peimbert, A.; Esteban, C.; García-Rojas, J.; Bresolin, F.; Carigi, L.; Ruiz, M. T.; López-Sánchez, A. R.
Referencia bibliográfica

First Light Science with the GTC (Eds. R. Guzmán, C. Packham, J. M. Rodríguez-Espinosa, & S. Torres-Peimbert) Revista Mexicana de Astronomía y Astrofísica (Serie de Conferencias) Vol. 29, pp. 72-79 (2007) (http://www.astroscu.unam.mx/~rmaa/)

Fecha de publicación:
6
2007
Número de autores
8
Número de autores del IAC
0
Número de citas
45
Número de citas referidas
35
Descripción
Based on O II recombination lines we present a new calibration (called O II_{RL}) of Pagel's O_{23} indicator to determine the O/H abundance ratio in extragalactic H II regions and emission line galaxies. The O II_{RL} calibration produces O/H abundances about a factor of two higher than those derived from the T(4363) method with t^2 = 0.00. The O II_{RL} calibration has implications for the study of different properties of emission line galaxies such as their metallicity, star formation rate, and initial mass function. The O II_{RL} calibration also affects the abundance determinations based on other O/H indicators, that include collisionally excited lines, like those known as O_3N_2, N_2, S_{23], Ar_3O_3, and S_3O_3. We argue that the controversy between the T(4363) method and the photoionization models method to derive O/H values is mainly due to temperature variations inside the observed H II regions.