The extended HeII$\lambda$4686 emission in the extremely metal-poor galaxy SBS0335-052E seen with MUSE

TL;DR

This study uses VLT/MUSE and Chandra observations to analyze the nebular HeII$\lambda$4686 emission in the extremely metal-poor galaxy SBS0335-052E, revealing that hot stellar continua likely drive the ionization, challenging current models.

Contribution

First spatially resolved spectral map of HeII$\lambda$4686 in SBS0335-052E, showing the ionization source is likely hot stellar continua rather than X-ray sources or shocks.

Findings

HeII emission is more common at high redshift than locally.

X-ray sources and shocks are unlikely to contribute significantly to HeII ionization.

HeII-ionization can only be explained by specific stellar populations, challenging existing models.

Abstract

SBS0335-052E, one of the most metal-poor (Z ~ 3-4% Z$_{\odot}$) HeII-emitter starbursts known in the nearby universe, is studied using optical VLT/MUSE spectroscopic and Chandra X-ray observations. We spatially resolved the spectral map of the nebular HeII$\lambda$4686 emission from which we derived for the first time the total HeII-ionizing energy budget of SBS0335-052E. The nebular HeII line is indicative of a quite hard ionizing spectrum with photon energies > 4 Ryd, and is observed to be more common at high-z than locally. Our study rules out a significant contribution from X-ray sources and shocks to the HeII photoionization budget, indicating that the He$^{+}$ excitation is mainly due to hot stellar continua. We discovered a new WR knot, but we also discard single WR stars as the main responsible for the HeII ionization. By comparing observations with current models, we found that the HeII-ionization budget of SBS0335-052E can only be produced by either single, rotating metal-free stars or a binary population with Z ~ 10$^{-5}$ and a 'top-heavy' IMF. This discrepancy between the metallicity of such stars and that of the HII regions in SBS0335-052E is similar to results obtained by Kehrig et al. (2015) for the very metal-deficient HeII-emitting galaxy IZw18. These results suggest that the HeII ionization is still beyond the capabilities of state-of-the-art models. Extremely metal-poor, high-ionizing starbursts in the local universe, like SBS0335-052E, provide unique laboratories for exploring in detail the extreme conditions likely prevailing in the reionization era.