Young stars and ionized nebulae in M83: comparing chemical abundances at high metallicity

TL;DR

This study compares stellar and nebular metallicities in the high-metallicity galaxy M83, finding that certain nebular diagnostics align well with stellar data, while others underestimate metallicity, highlighting calibration challenges.

Contribution

It provides a detailed comparison of stellar and nebular metallicities at high metallicity, evaluating different abundance diagnostics and their accuracy.

Findings

Direct nebular abundances agree with stellar metallicities after dust correction.

Empirical strong-line diagnostics often underestimate metallicity above solar levels.

Recombination lines match stellar metallicities in high-metallicity environments.

Abstract

We present spectra of 14 A-type supergiants in the metal-rich spiral galaxy M83. We derive stellar parameters and metallicities, and measure a spectroscopic distance modulus m-M = 28.47 +\- 0.10 (4.9 +\- 0.2 Mpc), in agreement with other methods. We use the stellar characteristic metallicity of M83 and other systems to discuss a version of the galaxy mass-metallicity relation that is independent of the analysis of nebular emission lines and the associated systematic uncertainties. We reproduce the radial metallicity gradient of M83, which flattens at large radii, with a chemical evolution model, constraining gas inflow and outflow processes. We carry out a comparative analysis of the metallicities we derive from the stellar spectra and published HII region line fluxes, utilizing both the direct, Te-based method and different strong-line abundance diagnostics. The direct abundances are in relatively good agreement with the stellar metallicities, once we apply a modest correction to the nebular oxygen abundance due to depletion onto dust. Popular empirically calibrated strong-line diagnostics tend to provide nebular abundances that underestimate the stellar metallicities above the solar value by ~0.2 dex. This result could be related to difficulties in selecting calibration samples at high metallicity. The O3N2 method calibrated by Pettini and Pagel gives the best agreement with our stellar metallicities. We confirm that metal recombination lines yield nebular abundances that agree with the stellar abundances for high metallicity systems, but find evidence that in more metal-poor environments they tend to underestimate the stellar metallicities by a significant amount, opposite to the behavior of the direct method.