Metal enrichment of the neutral gas of blue compact dwarf galaxies: the compelling case of Pox 36

TL;DR

This study analyzes the metal content of the neutral gas in Pox 36, a blue compact dwarf galaxy, revealing a significant underabundance of metals compared to the ionized gas, with implications for understanding metal mixing in such galaxies.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed measurement of neutral gas metallicity in Pox 36 using FUSE data, highlighting the metal deficiency and the metal enrichment process in BCDs.

Findings

Neutral gas is about 7 times more metal-poor than ionized gas.

Metallicity of neutral gas is approximately 1/35 of solar.

Most metals from star formation are confined to the ionized regions.

Abstract

We present the analysis of the interstellar spectrum of Pox 36 with the Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer (FUSE). Pox 36 was selected because of the relatively low foreground gas content that makes it possible to detect absorption-lines weak enough that unseen components should not be saturated. Interstellar lines of HI, NI, OI, SiII, PII, ArI, and FeII are detected. Column densities are derived directly from the observed line profiles except for HI, whose lines are contaminated by stellar absorption. We used the TLUSTY models to remove the stellar continuum and isolate the interstellar component. The best fit indicates that the dominant stellar population is B0. The fit of the interstellar HI line gives a column density of 10^{20.3\pm0.4} cm-2. Chemical abundances were then computed from the column densities using the dominant ionization stage in the neutral gas. Our abundances are compared to those measured from emission-line spectra in the optical. Our results suggest that the neutral gas of Pox 36 is metal-deficient by a factor ~7 as compared to the ionized gas, and they agree with a metallicity of ~1/35 Z$_\odot$. Conclusions: The abundance discontinuity between the neutral and ionized phases implies that most of the metals released by consecutive star-formation episodes mixes with the HI gas. The volume extent of the enrichment is so large that the metallicity of the neutral gas increases only slightly. The star-forming regions could be enriched only by a small fraction (~1%), but it would greatly enhance its metallicity. Our results are compared to those of other BCDs. We confirm the overall underabundance of metals in their neutral gas, with perhaps only the lowest metallicity BCDs showing no discontinuity.