[O III] / [N II] as an abundance indicator at high redshift

By M. Pettini, B. Pagel. 2004

1,370 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Among 'empirical' methods of estimating oxygen abundances in extragalactic H II regions, the use of the ratio of nebular lines of [O III] and [N II], first introduced by Alloin et al., is reappraised with modern calibration data and shown to have certain advantages over Ρ 23 ≡ ([On] + [O III])/Hβ and N2 ≡ [N II] λ6583/Hα, particularly when applied to star-forming galaxies at high redshifts.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/cff04781a461b8b615ad088a678477834fa09b7d

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. P. Hopkins
2. L. Hernquist
3. R. Dav'e
4. C. Conroy
5. R. Somerville
6. A. Dekel
7. P. V. van Dokkum
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In Instrumentation

1. P. Hopkins
2. C. Conroy
3. L. Hernquist
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5. P. V. van Dokkum
6. A. Dekel
7. A. Shapley
8. M. Franx

Citations in the corpus

• PHIBSS: Unified Scaling Relations of Gas Depletion Time and Molecular Gas Fractions (2017, methodology): “For the few SFGs in this paper with estimates of gas phase metallicities from rest-frame optical strong line ratios, we determine individual estimates of logZ=12 + log(O/H), adopting the Pettini and Pagel (2004) scale (e.g. Kewley & Ellison 2008 for a detailed discussion).”
• A Survey of Star-forming Galaxies in the 1.4 ≲ z ≲ 2.5 Redshift Desert: Overview (2004, methodology): “Adopting the recent calibration by Pettini & Pagel (2004), 12þ log ðO=HÞ ¼ 8:90þ 0:57 N2; ð3Þ where N2 log ð½N II k6583=H ), we deduce 12þ log ðO=HÞ ¼ 8:53 0:25 (the error includes both the random error in our measurement of the N2 index and the 0.2 dex accuracy of the N2 calibrator [at the 68%…”
• STRONG NEBULAR LINE RATIOS IN THE SPECTRA of z ∼ 2–3 STAR FORMING GALAXIES: FIRST RESULTS FROM KBSS-MOSFIRE (2014, positive): “…(e.g., [O III]λλ4960,5008/[O II]λλ3727,3729) as well as the so-called “strong-line” metallicity indicators, e.g. those based on ([OIII] + [OII])/Hβ (“R23”; Pagel et al. 1979; Kewley & Dopita 2002), [NII]λ6585/Hα (“N2”) and ([OIII]λ5008/Hβ)/([NII]λ6585/Hα) (“O3N2”; Pettini & Pagel (2004) [PP04]).”
• The metallicity of the long GRB hosts and the fundamental metallicity relation of low-mass galaxies (2010, background): “Many metallicity indicators have been proposed that are based on line ratios (e.g., Pettini & Pagel 2004; Nagao et al. 2006; Kewley & Ellison 2008), but none of them is without problem.”
• The SINS/zC-SINF Survey of z ∼ 2 Galaxy Kinematics: SINFONI Adaptive Optics–assisted Data and Kiloparsec-scale Emission-line Properties (2018, methodology): “…N2 = log([N II]λ6584/Hα) and O3N2 = log {([O III]λ5007/Hβ)/([N II]λ6584/Hα)} indices when employing the same set of calibrators (such as proposed e.g., by Pettini & Pagel 2004) for eight of their z ∼ 2 lensed targets (without evidence for AGN or strong outflows) for which AO-assisted maps of all…”
• The Properties of Ultraviolet-luminous Galaxies at the Current Epoch (2004, background): “Pettini & Pagel (2004) have recently recalibrated the “[Oiii]/[N ii]” strong-line metallicity indicator.”
• Spectroscopy of superluminous supernova host galaxies. A preference of hydrogen-poor events for extreme emission line galaxies (2014, methodology): “In many cases, predominantly for galaxies hosting H-poor SLSNe, the [N II] line was not detected (an indication of low metallicity) and only an upper limit for the N2 and O3N2 scales can be computed.”
• De re metallica: the cosmic chemical evolution of galaxies (2018, background): “The fact that DLAs are not directly tracing the bulk of the active and luminous part of galaxies has been discussed for instance by Pettini et al. (1999) and Pettini (2004), based on the weak redshift evolution of the metallicity in DLAs.”
• THE UNIVERSAL RELATION OF GALACTIC CHEMICAL EVOLUTION: THE ORIGIN OF THE MASS–METALLICITY RELATION (2014, methodology): “Empirical diagnostics are typically calibrated to metallicities measured from temperature sensitive auroral lines (e.g., Pettini & Pagel 2004).”
• RECONCILING THE STELLAR AND NEBULAR SPECTRA OF HIGH-REDSHIFT GALAXIES (2016, result): “(12) The calibrations given in equations 10 and 11 use somewhat different parameters compared to the commonly-used calibrations of Pettini & Pagel (2004) (PP04); however, for the line indices measured in the KBSS-LM1 composite the results are very similar, as we show below.”
• The Mass-Metallicity Relation at z≳2 (2006, methodology): “Pettini & Pagel (2004) find that O3N2 varies with oxygen abundance as 12 + log (O/H) = 8.73− 0.32×O3N2.”
• From Rings to Bulges: Evidence for Rapid Secular Galaxy Evolution at z ~ 2 from Integral Field Spectroscopy in the SINS Survey (2008, background): “Unless the [N ii]/H ratio is strongly affected by a central AGN, [N ii]/H is a proxy of the oxygen to hydrogen abundance ratio in the ionized interstellar medium (Pettini & Pagel 2004; Erb et al. 2006a).”
• The host galaxies and classification of active galactic nuclei (2006, background): “The log([N ii]/Hα) line ratio is a linear function of the nebular metallicity until high metallicities where the log([N ii]/Hα) ratio saturates (Kewley & Dopita 2002; Denicoló et al. 2002; Pettini & Pagel 2004).”
• A CONTINUUM OF H- TO He-RICH TIDAL DISRUPTION CANDIDATES WITH A PREFERENCE FOR E+A GALAXIES (2014, methodology): “We calibrate the gas-phase metallicity in our sample using the PP04 ‘N2’ method (Pettini & Pagel 2004) following the procedure described in Kewley & Ellison (2008).”
• ON THE SOURCE OF THE DUST EXTINCTION IN TYPE Ia SUPERNOVAE AND THE DISCOVERY OF ANOMALOUSLY STRONG Na i ABSORPTION (2013, background): “The [N ii] λ6584/Hα and [S ii]/Hα flux ratios are both ∼0.7 and the [O iii] λ5007 line is not detected, suggesting that the ionized gas is reasonably metal-rich (Pettini & Pagel 2004).”
• THE MOSDEF SURVEY: MEASUREMENTS OF BALMER DECREMENTS AND THE DUST ATTENUATION CURVE AT REDSHIFTS z ∼ 1.4–2.6 (2015, methodology): “We investigated the dependence of β on metallicity by using MOSDEF measurements of the [NII]λ6585/Hα ratio (“N2 index”) with the Pettini & Pagel (2004) calibration to infer the gas-phase oxygen 8 N. Reddy, M. Kriek, A. Shapley, et al. abundance.9 We have assumed that the gas-phase and stellar…”
• THE MOSDEF SURVEY: ELECTRON DENSITY AND IONIZATION PARAMETER AT z ∼ 2.3 (2015, methodology): “In Sanders et al. (2015), we found z ∼ 2.3 galaxies have metallicities ∼ 0.3 dex lower than local galaxies at fixed M∗ using the O3N2 calibration of Pettini & Pagel (2004).”
• THE SINS SURVEY OF z ∼ 2 GALAXY KINEMATICS: PROPERTIES OF THE GIANT STAR-FORMING CLUMPS (2010, methodology): “Given the [N ii]/Hα values in Table 3 we calculate the metallicity using the prescription of Pettini & Pagel (2004) and, assuming the solar ratio of mass in oxygen to total mass in heavy elements, derive the total mass fraction of heavy elements (z).”