Influence of Departures from LTE on Oxygen Abundance Determination

TL;DR

This study investigates how departures from LTE affect oxygen abundance measurements in stars, showing that non-LTE effects are generally small but significant in infrared lines, and emphasizing the importance of accurate collisional data.

Contribution

The paper provides updated non-LTE calculations for O I, analyzing the impact of inelastic collisions and refining oxygen abundance determinations in various stellar atmospheres.

Findings

Non-LTE corrections are negative and grow with temperature and lower gravity.

Infrared O I lines show larger non-LTE effects, up to -1.9 dex.

Agreement between different lines improves when accounting for inelastic collisions.

Abstract

We performed non-LTE calculations for O I with the plane-parallel model atmospheres for a set of stellar parameters corresponding to A-K type stars. The model atom of Przybilla et al. (2000) was updated using the best theoretical and experimental atomic data available so far. Non-LTE leads to strengthening the O I lines, and the difference between the non-LTE and LTE abundances (non-LTE correction) is negative. The departures from LTE grow toward higher effective temperature and lower surface gravity. In the entire temperature range and log g = 4, the non-LTE correction does not exceed 0.05 dex in absolute value for O I lines in the visible spectral range. The non-LTE corrections are significantly larger for the infrared O I 7771-5 A lines and reach -1.9 dex in the model atmosphere with Teff = 10000 K and log g = 2. To differentiate the effects of inelastic collisions with electrons and neutral hydrogen atoms on the statistical equilibrium (SE) of O I, we derived the oxygen abundance for the three well studied A-type stars Vega, Sirius, and HD 32115. For each star, non-LTE leads to smaller difference between the infrared and visible lines. For example, for Vega, this difference reduces from 1.17 dex in LTE down to 0.14 dex when ignoring LTE. To remove the difference between the infrared and visible lines in A-type stars completely, one needs to reduce the used electron-impact excitation rates by Barklem (2007) by a factor of 4. In the case of Procyon and the Sun, inelastic collisions with H I affect the SE of O I, and agreement between the abundances from different lines is achieved when using the Drawin's formalism to compute collisional rates. The solar mean oxygen abundance from the O I 6300, 6158, 7771-5, and 8446 A lines is log epsilon = 8.74+-0.05, when using the MAFAGS-OS solar model atmosphere and log epsilon = 8.78+-0.03, when applying the 3D corrections from the literature.