The Green Bank Telescope H II Region Discovery Survey: IV. Helium and Carbon Recombination Lines

TL;DR

This study analyzes helium and carbon radio recombination lines in newly discovered Galactic H II regions, revealing consistent helium abundances and providing insights into the ionization state and composition of these distant nebulae.

Contribution

It presents the first detailed measurements of helium and carbon RRLs in HRDS nebulae, expanding knowledge of Galactic star-forming regions at large distances.

Findings

Average He-4+/H+ ratio is 0.068, consistent with known regions.

Detected helium emission in 14% of HRDS nebulae.

Detected carbon RRLs in 20 nebulae, with no correlation to infrared morphology.

Abstract

The Green Bank Telescope H II Region Discovery Survey (GBT HRDS) found hundreds of previously unknown Galactic regions of massive star formation by detecting hydrogen radio recombination line (RRL) emission from candidate H II region targets. Since the HRDS nebulae lie at large distances from the Sun, they are located in previously unprobed zones of the Galactic disk. Here we derive the properties of helium and carbon RRL emission from HRDS nebulae. Our target sample is the subset of the HRDS that has visible helium or carbon RRLs. This criterion gives a total of 84 velocity components (14% of the HRDS) with helium emission and 52 (9%) with carbon emission. For our highest quality sources, the average ionic He-4+/H+ abundance ratio by number, <y+>, is 0.068 +/- 0.023 (1-sigma). This is the same ratio as that measured for the sample of previously known Galactic H II regions. Nebulae without detected helium emission give robust y+ upper limits. There are 5 RRL emission components with y+ less than 0.04 and another 12 with upper limits below this value. These H II regions must have either a very low He-4 abundance or contain a significant amount of neutral helium. The HRDS has 20 nebulae with carbon RRL emission but no helium emission at its sensitivity level. There is no correlation between the carbon RRL parameters and the 8 microns mid-infrared morphology of these nebulae.