Deep survey of millimeter RRLs towards the planetary nebulae IC 418 and NGC 7027

TL;DR

This paper presents a comprehensive survey of radio recombination lines in the millimeter range for the planetary nebulae IC 418 and NGC 7027, revealing new lines and providing detailed modeling of their physical conditions.

Contribution

It offers the most complete catalog of RRLs in these nebulae at 2, 3, and 7 mm, including many lines detected for the first time, and compares observations with synthetic models.

Findings

Detection of multiple H and He I RRLs in both nebulae.

First-time detection of HeII RRLs in NGC 7027.

Confirmation of no molecular emission in IC 418 above ~3 mK.

Abstract

The circumstellar environments of PNe are wonderful chemically rich astrophysical laboratories in which the ionization of atoms and the formation of simple and complex molecules can be studied. The new high-sensitivity receivers open the possibility to carry out deep observations, essential to unveil weak atomic and molecular spectra in the mm range. The main goal of this work is to study the emission lines detected in the spectra of the bright C-rich PNe IC 418 and NGC 7027 and to identify all those emission features associated with radio recombination lines (RRLs) of light elements. We aim to analyze the RRLs detected on each source, and to model the sources and derive their physical parameters. This work allows us to provide the most complete and updated catalog of RRLs in space, carried out at 2, 3 and 7 mm with the IRAM 30m and the Yebes 40m radio telescopes. We compare these observational data sets with synthetic models produced with the radiation transfer code Co3RaL. Our observations reveal the presence of several H and He I RRLs at mm wavelengths in the spectra of IC 418 and NGC 7027 and also of HeIIi RRLs in the spectrum of NGC 7027. Many of these lines had remained undetected until now due to their weakness and the lack of high-sensitivity observations at these frequencies. The data also confirm the absence of molecular emission towards IC 418, above a detection level of ~3 mK [Tmb]. These mm observations represent the most extended RRL line survey of two C-rich PNe carried out so far, with most of the lines never reported before. These extremely complete catalogs evidence the importance of high-sensitivity observations and are expected to be very helpful in the line identification process in mm observations, in particular for still unknown or poorly characterized molecular species existing in the vicinity of ionized environments.