Modeling the Photoionized Interface in Blister HII Regions

Abstract

We present a grid of photoionization models for the emission from photoevaporative interfaces between the ionized gas and molecular cloud in blister HII regions. For the density profiles of the emitting gas in the models, we use a general power law form calculated for photoionized, photoevaporative flows by Bertoldi (1989). We find that the spatial emission line profiles are dependent on the incident flux, the shape of the ionizing continuum and the elemental abundances. In particular, we find that the peak emissivity of the [SII] and [NII] lines are more sensitive to the elemental abundances than are the total line intensities. The diagnostics obtained from the grid of models can be used in conjunction with high spatial resolution data to infer the properties of ionized interfaces in blister HII regions. As an example, we consider a location at the tip of an ``elephant trunk'' structure in M16 (the Eagle Nebula) and show how narrow band HST-WFPC2 images constrain the HII region properties. We present a photoionization model that explains the ionization structure and emission from the interface seen in these high spatial resolution data.