The Distribution of Metallicities in the Local Galactic Interstellar Medium*

Abstract

Abstract In this investigation, we present an analysis of the metallicity distribution that pertains to neutral gas in the local Galactic interstellar medium (ISM). We derive relative ISM metallicities for a sample of 84 sight lines probing diffuse atomic and molecular gas within 4 kpc of the Sun. Our analysis is based in large part on column density measurements reported in the literature for 22 different elements that are commonly studied in interstellar clouds. We supplement the literature data with new column density determinations for certain key elements and several individual sight lines important to our analysis. Our methodology involves comparing the relative gas-phase abundances of many different elements for a given sight line to simultaneously determine the strength of dust depletion in that direction and the overall metallicity offset. We find that many sight lines probe multiple distinct gas regions with different depletion properties, which complicates the metallicity analysis. Nevertheless, our results provide clear evidence that the dispersion in the metallicities of neutral interstellar clouds in the solar neighborhood is small (∼0.10 dex) and only slightly larger than the typical measurement uncertainties. We find no evidence for the existence of very low metallicity gas (as has recently been reported by De Cia et al.) along any of the 84 sight lines in our sample. Our results are consistent with a local Galactic ISM that is well mixed and chemically homogeneous.