Neon Abundances of B Stars in the Solar Neighborhood

We constructed a comprehensive model atom for Nei-Neiiusing the most-up-to-date atomic data available and evaluated the nonlocal thermodynamic equilibrium (NLTE) line formation for Neiand Neiiin classical 1D models representing the atmospheres of B-type stars. We find that the large NLTE strengthening of the Neilines corresponding to the 2p(5)3p-2p(5)3s transition array occurs due to extremely small photoionization cross sections of the 2p(5)3s levels that lead to strong overpopulation of these levels relative to their LTE populations. The deviations from LTE for most Neiilines are small and do not exceed 0.11 dex in absolute value. We analyzed 20 lines of Neiand 13 lines of Neiifor 24 B-type stars in the temperature range of 10,400 <= T-eff <= 33,400 K. For five stars, the NLTE leads to consistent abundances of Neiand Neii, while the difference in LTE abundance can reach up to 0.50 dex. Using the experimental oscillator strengths recently measured by Piracha et al. leads to smaller line-by-line scatter for most of the investigated stars. The average neon abundance in 24 B-type stars in the solar neighborhood is 8.02+/-0.05. This value may provide indirect constraints on the solar photospheric neon abundance.