Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 000, 1–?? (2016) Printed 18 September 2018 (MN LATEX style file v2.2) Spitzer mid-infrared spectroscopic observations of planetary nebulae⋆ H. Mata1†, G. Ramos-Larios2, M.A. Guerrero3, A. Nigoche-Netro2, J.A. Toala´3,4, X. Fang3, G. Rubio1, S.N. Kemp2, S.G. Navarro2, and L.J. Corral2 1Centro Universitario de Ciencias Exactas e Ingenier´ıas, Universidad de Guadalajara, Av. Revoluci´on 1500, Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico 2Instituto de Astronom´ıa y Meteorolog´ıa, CUCEI, Universidad de Guadalajara, Av. Vallarta No. 2602, Col. Arcos Vallarta, 44130 Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico 3Instituto de Astrof´ısica de Andaluc´ıa, IAA-CSIC, C/ Glorieta de la Astronom´ıa s/n, 18008 Granada, Spain 4Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Academia Sinica (ASIAA), Taipei 10617, Taiwan Received 2015 May 09; in original form 2014 August 18 ABSTRACT We present Spitzer Space Telescope archival mid-infrared (mid-IR) spectroscopy of a sample of eleven planetary nebulae (PNe). The observations, acquired with the Spitzer In- frared Spectrograph (IRS), cover the spectral range 5.2-14.5 µm that includes the H2 0-0 S(2) to S(7) rotational emission lines. This wavelength coverage has allowed us to derive the Boltz- mann distribution and calculate the H2 rotational excitation temperature (Tex). The derived excitation temperatures have consistent values ≃900±70 K for different sources despite their different structural components. We also report the detection of mid-IR ionic lines of [Ar III], [S IV], and [Ne II] in most objects, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) features in a few cases. The decline of the [Ar III]/[Ne II] line ratio with the stellar effective temperature can be explained either by a true neon enrichment or by high density circumstellar regions of PNe that presumably descend from higher mass progenitor stars. Key words: (ISM:) planetary nebulae: individual (M2-51, NGC2346, NGC 2440, NGC2818, NGC3132, NGC6072, NGC6445, NGC6537, NGC6720, NGC 6781, NGC7293 — planetary nebulae: general — ISM: lines and bands — infrared: general 1 INTRODUCTION 1987; Dinerstein et al. 1988; Sternberg & Dalgarno 1989). On the other hand, shocks propagating into a medium can heat the gas Molecular hydrogen (H2) is the most abundant molecule in the Uni- and collisionally excite the H2 molecules (e.g., Hollenbach & Shull arXiv:1603.06667v1 [astro-ph.SR] 22 Mar 2016 verse. Its excitation and emission has been thoroughly studied the- 1977; Draine, Roberge & Dalgarno 1983; Smith 1995). This is also oretically and the emission line ratios have been modelled in detail the case for the outflowing gas in PNe, which can produce the colli- (Burton 1992; Burton, Hollenbach & Tielens 1992). sional excitation of H in shock regions even if they are embedded Transitions from the rotational and vibrational levels of the 2 in the ionized regions of PNe with high temperature central stars ground electronic state of the H molecule produce emission lines 2 (Aleman & Gruenwald 2011). in the spectral range from the ultraviolet (UV) to the far-infrared Planetary nebulae (PNe) are classical targets for the study (far-IR). The most relevant excitation mechanisms of H are: i) flu- 2 of molecular hydrogen, very particularly through its infrared line orescence or radiative pumping through the absorption of UV radi- emission. Near-infrared (near-IR) narrowband imaging surveys of ation from a hot source, and ii) collisional excitation. Photodissoci- PNe have detected the presence of H in many objects (e.g., Storey ation regions (PDRs), where a hot source of UV photons irradiates 2 1984; Webster et al. 1988; Latter et al. 1995; Kastner et al. 1996; neutral clouds of material, are typical sites for UV excitation of H . 2 Bohigas 2001, 2003; Guerrero et al. 2000). The H emission is de- This includes star-forming regions, but it also applies to any cloud 2 tected in the envelopes and PDRs of PNe, where the molecule can illuminated by a local interstellar radiation field (Burton 1992; be shielded from the UV radiation of the central star by the in- Habart et al. 2005), and particularly the photodissociation front ner gas and dust or by high-density clumps (Aleman & Gruenwald around a planetary nebula (PN) central star (Black & van Dishoeck 2004). Using the known general behaviour and properties of H2 in the interstellar medium (ISM; Habart et al. 2005), several stud- ⋆ This work is based on observations made with the Spitzer Space Tele- ies have attempted to gain insight into the conditions in PNe scope, which is operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California where this species is found. The correlation between the bipo- Institute of Technology under a contract with NASA. lar morphology of PNe and the H2 detection is well documented † E-mail: [email protected] (GRL) (Kastner et al. 1996), suggesting that the H2-bright waists of bipo- c 2016 RAS 2 H. Mata et al. lar PNe are the remnants of dense, molecule-rich circumstellar the SL1 and 5.2-7.7 µm for the SL2. This spectral range is specially disks. Alternatively, it has been claimed that the preferential de- suited for analyses of Boltzmann distributions (see section 4) as it tection of H2 emission in bipolar PNe may be an effect of the typ- includes the S(2) to S(7) rotational lines of H2. ically higher effective temperature of their central stars (Phillips 2006; Aleman & Gruenwald 2004; Aleman & Gruenwald 2011). 2.2 Target Selection The consensus is that the brightest H2 emitters tend to be bipo- lar PNe, but deep near-IR imaging of the 2.122 µm H2 emission The procedure for the target selection in this study is as follows: line shows that this emission is not exclusive to this morphology 1) we first searched through the literature for PNe that are known to (Marquez-Lugo et al. 2013). exhibit H2 emission; 2) then we queried the Spitzer online database Besides the excellent near-IR spectroscopic survey of for objects with SL1 and SL2 spectra modules in the 5.2-14.5 µm PNe and study of upper vibrational levels carried out by range; and 3) objects without suitable observations through nearby Hora, Latter & Deutsch (1999), the actual investigation of the slits that could be used for background subtraction were discarded. excitation mechanism of H2 in PNe and the calculations of Eventually, eleven objects were selected for analysis: M 2- its excitation temperature have been made in the context of 51, NGC 2346, NGC 2440, NGC 2818, NGC 3132, NGC 6072, other detailed studies (see e.g., Hora & Latter 1994, 1996; NGC 6445, NGC 6537, NGC 6720, NGC 6781, and NGC 7293. Ba- Shupe et al. 1998; Rudy et al. 2001; Lumsden, Puxley & Hoare sic properties of our targets are presented in Table 1. The informa- 2001; Garc´ıa-Hern´andez et al. 2002; Davis et al. 2003; Likkel et al. tion on the available Astronomical Observation Requests (AORs) 2006; Ramos-Larios, Guerrero & Miranda 2008; Aleman et al. for each object is shown in Table 2. Several PNe known to show H2 2011, and references therein). Mid-infrared (mid-IR) spectroscopy emission with available Spitzer data did not meet the criteria above is a powerful tool for the study of the thermal and molecular and were thus not included in this study. No suitable background in- emission from PNe, since such observations are much less af- formation was available for NGC 40, NGC 650-1, NGC 6369, and fected by dust extinction. Mid-IR studies of PNe have focused on NGC 7026, no H2 emission was detected in the SL spectra of J 900, imaging surveys (e.g., Hora et al. 2004; Phillips & Ramos-Larios NGC 6629, and NGC 7027, and no SL spectra were available for 2008; Zhang & Kwok 2009; Phillips & Ramos-Larios 2010; Hb 12, Hu 2-1, IC 5117, and M 2-9. Zhang, Hsia & Kwok 2012), but mid-IR spectroscopy of PNe has only been carried out for individual objects for which chem- ical abundances and H2 excitation temperatures were obtained 2.3 Data Reduction (Cox et al. 1998; Matsuura & Zijlstra 2005; Hora et al. 2006; After selecting the SL1 and SL2 bands for each nebula in Ta- Phillips, Ramos-Larios & Guerrero 2011). Currently, mid-IR stud- ble 2, the Basic Calibrated Data (BCD) were downloaded for ies of the excitation temperature of H in PNe are scarce. 2 analysis from the NASA/IPAC Archive. The Spitzer BCD data Using archival Spitzer mid-IR spectroscopy, we have con- have been dark-subtracted, flat field corrected, and wavelength and ducted a spectroscopic survey of PNe to assess the presence of ionic flux calibrated. The data were further processed using the soft- species, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), and molecular ware package CUBISM1 (Cube Builder for IRS Spectral Map- hydrogen. The H excitation temperature has been derived using its 2 ping; Smith et al. 2007) to subtract the sky emission and produce mid-IR emission lines. These temperatures shed light on the purely clean, low-resolution spectra for each object. The various process- rotational component of the excitation temperatures to complement ing steps within CUBISM include characterization of noise in the the rotational-vibrational studies obtained by near-IR observations. data and removal of bad pixels. One-dimensional spectra were then Section 2 details the criteria for target selection and the data extracted and line fluxes measured accounting for bad pixel correc- processing. Section 3 describes the mid-IR spectroscopic properties tion and map creation (e.g. a continuum-subtracted line image). of each PN in our sample. A review of theory behind data analysis is given in section 4 and the final discussion is presented in section 5.