Iron Abundance in the Hot Interstellar Medium

Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy

Scientific paper

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Scientific paper

The iron depletion level and the gas-phase iron abundance in the hot ( 10^6 K) interstellar medium (ISM) is critical to the understanding of its energy balance as well as the thermal sputtering, cooling, and heating processes of dust grains. Here we report on the first detection of the FeXVII absorption line at 15.02 Å from the hot ISM in the spectrum of the low mass X-ray binary 4U 1820--303 observed with Chandra X-ray observatory. By jointly analyzing this absorption line with those from OVII, OVIII, and NeIX ions in the same spectrum, we obtain an abundance ratio of Fe/Ne that is consistent with the solar value of Anders & Grevesse. We find that this result is robust with respect to different assumed gas temperature distributions, indicating that there is very little or no iron depleted into the dust grains in the hot gas. This is in contrast to the observed heavy iron depletion in the cool and warm ISM. The conclusion is consistent with the scenario that most of or all of the dust grains have been destroyed in the hot ISM.

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