Journal
MONTHLY NOTICES OF THE ROYAL ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY
Volume 468, Issue 4, Pages 4311-4322Publisher
OXFORD UNIV PRESS
DOI: 10.1093/mnras/stx673
Keywords
atomic data; line: formation; methods: numerical; methods: observational; Sun: abundances; Sun: atmosphere
Categories
Funding
- Alexander von Humboldt Foundation
- Swedish Research Council [2015-00415 3]
- Marie Sklodowska Curie Actions [INCA 600398]
- Swedish National Infrastructure for Computing (SNIC) at UPPMAX [p2013234]
- Australian Research Council [FL110100012]
- Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
- Wenner-Gren Foundation
- Goran Gustafssons Stiftelse
- Swedish Research Council
- Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation
- New Milky Way from the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation
- Danish National Research Foundation [DNRF106]
- European Research Council under the European Union [291058]
- Division Of Astronomical Sciences
- Direct For Mathematical & Physical Scien [1313265] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
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Our ability to model the shapes and strengths of iron lines in the solar spectrum is a critical test of the accuracy of the solar iron abundance, which sets the absolute zero-point of all stellar metallicities. We use an extensive 463-level Fe atom with new photoionization cross-sections for Fe I and quantum mechanical calculations of collisional excitation and charge transfer with neutral hydrogen; the latter effectively remove a free parameter that has hampered all previous line formation studies of Fe in non-local thermodynamic equilibrium (NLTE). For the first time, we use realistic 3D NLTE calculations of Fe for a quantitative comparison to solar observations. We confront our theoretical line profiles with observations taken at different viewing angles across the solar disc with the Swedish 1-m Solar Telescope. We find that 3D modelling well reproduces the observed centre-to-limb behaviour of spectral lines overall, but highlight aspects that may require further work, especially cross-sections for inelastic collisions with electrons. Our inferred solar iron abundance is log(epsilon(Fe)) = 7.48 +/- 0.04 dex.
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