SDSS-V LVM: A Spatially Resolved Study of the Physical Conditions and the Chemical Abundance Discrepancy in the Lagoon Nebula (M 8)

Singh, Amrita; Blanc, Guillermo A.; Kumari, Nimisha; Méndez-Delgado, J. E.; Sánchez, Sebastián F.; Morisset, Christophe; Congiu, Enrico; Kreckel, Kathryn; Roman-Lopes, Alexandre; Egorov, Oleg; Drory, Niv; Sankrit, Ravi; Mejía-Narváez, Alfredo; Egorova, Evgeniya; Jones, Amy M.; Bizyaev, Dmitry; Sattler, Natascha; Johnston, Evelyn J.; Minniti, Dante; Zermeño, Rodolfo de J.; Fernández-Trincado, José G.; Kollmeier, Juna A.
Bibliographical reference

The Astrophysical Journal

Advertised on:
4
2026
Number of authors
22
IAC number of authors
1
Citations
0
Refereed citations
0
Description
The abundance discrepancy problem refers to the systematic differences observed between chemical abundances derived from collisionally excited lines (CELs) and recombination lines (RLs) of heavy ions. It remains a major unsolved problem in the study of ionized nebulae and is quantified by the abundance discrepancy factor (ADF). In this work, we present a deep integral field spectroscopic data set of the entire Lagoon Nebula (M8), obtained by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey V Local Volume Mapper project, at a spatial resolution of 0.21 pc spaxel−1. This unique data set allows us, for the first time, to investigate spatially resolved maps of oxygen RL intensities (O II V1), together with maps of H I RLs, heavy-ion CELs, and dust attenuation across a whole H II region. We map the electron temperature using CELs and RLs of O2+ and CELs of N+, and we map the electron density using CELs of S+. We derive CEL-based ionic and elemental oxygen abundances and, for the first time, a spatially resolved map of the RL-based O2+ abundance in an H II region. These measurements enable construction of the first spatially resolved ADF(O2+) map of an H II region and yield a global mean ADF of ∼0.47 ± 0.02 dex. Focusing on the central region of M8, where ionization is dominated by the O-type star Her 36, we find radial variations in the ADF, ranging between ∼0.35 and 0.50 dex. Our findings provide novel constraints on the spatial behavior and origin of the abundance discrepancy in the H II regions.