Oxygen abundances in the narrow line regions of Seyfert galaxies and the metallicity–luminosity relation
Mark Armah, Rogério Riffel, Rogério Riffel, O. L. Dors, Kyuseok Oh, Michael Koss, Cláudio Ricci, Benny Trakhtenbrot, Mabel Valerdi, Rogemar A. Riffel, Rogemar A. Riffel, A. C. Krabbe
Abstract
ABSTRACT We present oxygen abundances relative to hydrogen (O/H) in the narrow line regions (NLRs) gas phases of Seyferts 1 (Sy 1s) and Seyferts 2 (Sy 2s) active galactic nuclei (AGNs). We used fluxes of the optical narrow emission line intensities [$3\, 500\lt \lambda ($Å$)\lt 7\, 000$] of 561 Seyfert nuclei in the local Universe ( z ≲ 0.31) from the second catalogue and data release (DR2) of the BAT AGN Spectroscopic Survey, which focuses on the Swift-BAT hard X-ray (≳ 10 keV) detected AGNs. We derived O/H from relative intensities of the emission lines via the strong-line methods. We find that the AGN O/H abundances are related to their hosts stellar masses and that they follow a downward redshift evolution. The derived O/H together with the hard X-ray luminosity (LX) were used to study the X-ray luminosity–metallicity (LX–ZNLR) relation for the first time in Seyfert galaxies. In contrast to the broad-line focused (LX–ZBLR) studies, we find that the LX–ZNLR exhibit significant anticorrelations with the Eddington ratio (λEdd) and these correlations vary with redshifts. This result indicates that the low-luminous AGNs are more actively undergoing interstellar medium enrichment through star formation in comparison with the more luminous X-ray sources. Our results suggest that the AGN is somehow driving the galaxy chemical enrichment, as a result of the inflow of pristine gas that is diluting the metal rich gas, together with a recent cessation on the circumnuclear star-formation.