Metallicity measurements in AGNs

Abstract

Measuring metallicity in the nuclear regions of AGNs is difficult because only a few lines are observed and ionization correction becomes a major problem. Nitrogen to carbon ratio has been widely used as an indicator for metallicity, but precise measurements have been lacking. We made such measurements for the first time using a wide baseline of ionization states with observations from FUSE, HST and Chandra. OVI observations with FUSE were crucial in this effort. We measured super-solar metallicities in two AGNs and found that N/C does not scale with metallicity. This suggests that chemical enrichment scenario in nuclear regions of galaxies may be different from traditional models of metal enrichment.

To appear in Future Directions in Ultraviolet Astronomy (AIP Conf Proc), Ed. Michael E. Van Steenberg