Measuring chemical abundances in AGN from infrared nebular lines: HII-CHI-Mistry-IR for AGN

TL;DR

This paper introduces HII-CHI-Mistry-IR, a Bayesian-like tool for estimating chemical abundances in AGN using IR emission lines, validated with a sample of 58 AGN, revealing systematic differences from optical estimates.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel IR-based method for chemical abundance estimation in AGN, filling a gap in current optical-focused studies and enabling analysis with upcoming IR observatories.

Findings

IR-based abundances are generally subsolar for O/H in AGN nuclei.

N/O ratios cluster around solar values.

IR and optical abundance estimates show a consistent discrepancy.

Abstract

Future and on-going infrared and radio observatories such as JWST, METIS or ALMA will increase the amount of rest-frame IR spectroscopic data for galaxies by several orders of magnitude. While studies of the chemical composition of the ISM based on optical observations have been widely spread over decades for SFG and, more recently, for AGN, similar studies need to be performed using IR data. This regime can be especially useful in the case of AGN given that it is less affected by temperature and dust extinction, traces higher ionic species and can also provide robust estimations of the chemical abundance ratio N/O. We present a new tool based on a bayesian-like methodology to estimate chemical abundances from IR emission lines in AGN. We use a sample of 58 AGN with IR spectroscopic data retrieved from the literature to probe the validity of our method. The estimations of the chemical abundances based on IR lines in our sample are later compared with the corresponding abundances derived from the optical emission lines in the same objects. HII-CHI-Mistry-IR takes advantage of photoionization models, characterized by the chemical abundance ratios O/H and N/O and the ionization parameter $U$, to compare their predicted emission-line fluxes with a set of observed values. Instead of matching single emission lines, the code uses some specific emission-line ratios sensitive to the above free parameters. We report mainly solar and also subsolar abundances for O/H in the nuclear region for our sample of AGN, whereas N/O clusters around solar values. We find a discrepancy between the chemical abundances derived from IR and optical emission lines, being the latter higher than the former. This discrepancy, also reported by previous studies of the composition of the ISM in AGN from IR observations, is independent from the gas density or the incident radiation field to the gas.