Doubly ionized neon ionic abundance of seyfert 2 nuclei based on infrared and optical emission lines

One of the most reliable method to determine the chemical abundance of heavy elements in gaseous nebulae is the (tau)e-method, which is based on the measurements of auroral emission lines (e.g., [O III] (lambda)4363 Å). However, this method yields unreal and subsolar abundances in AGNs. This phenomenon is customarily referred to as “temperature problem”, and its origin is an open question in nebular astrophysics. Comparison between optical and infrared abundances can be used to obtain the level of electron temperature fluctuations in AGNs, generally attributed to the origin of the temperature problem. In this work, optical and infrared emission-line intensities of neon from a sample of 36 Seyfert 2 nuclei compiled from the literature and used to calculate the ionic abundance of the neon twice ionized in relation to the hydrogen one ion (Ne2+/H+). This methodology makes it possible to obtain the level of electron temperature fluctuation necessary to conciliate the optical and infrared abundance values. We investigated the use of the Balmer decrement observed ratio of intensities of the 3 (seta) 2 (H(alfa) (lambda)6563 Å) and 4 (seta) 2 (H(beta) (lambda)4861 Å) transitions of the hydrogen atom compared to their intrinsic intensity ratio so as to yield a relative extinction in the Narrow Line Region (NLR) of Seyfert 2 nuclei and find that the use of (iota)(H(alfa)/H(beta)) = 2.85 gives (tau)e values of 700 ± 30 K higher than the (tau)e values derived from (iota)(H(alfa)/H(beta)) = 3.10. Our analysis show that, differences (D) between abundance values from optical and infrared lines range from 0.1334 ± 0.0219 to 2.0636 ± 0.0151 dex, with an averaged value of 0.6931 ± 0.0052 dex. This averaged value is approximately ~ 0.01 ± 0.01 dex higher than the one derived in H ii regions studies. We did not find any relation between the ionic abundance difference (D) and the ionization parameter (U), which implies D is independent from U. We estimated the level of temperature fluctuation in terms of the t2 parameter in the range from 0.0006 to 0.4365 ± 0.0053 with an average value of 0.1859 ± 0.0011. We conclude that, if electron temperature fluctuations are present in AGNs, they are somewhat more significant than in H ii regions.