Oxygen abundances in the narrow line regions of Seyfert galaxies and the metallicity-luminosity relation

We present oxygen abundances relative to hydrogen (O/H) in the narrow line regions (NLRs) gas phases of Seyferts 1 (Sy 1s) and Seyferts 2 (Sy 2s) active galactic nuclei (AGNs). We used fluxes of the optical narrow emission line intensities [3 500 < λ(Å) < 7 000] of 561 Seyfert nuclei in the local Universe (z ≲ 0.31) from the second catalogue and data release (DR2) of the BAT AGN Spectroscopic Survey, which focuses on the Swift-BAT hard X-ray (≳ 10 keV) detected AGNs. We derived O/H from relative intensities of the emission lines via the strong-line methods. We find that the AGN O/H abundances are related to their hosts stellar masses and that they follow a downward redshift evolution. The derived O/H together with the hard X-ray luminosity (L_X) were used to study the X-ray luminosity-metallicity (L_X-Z_NLR) relation for the first time in Seyfert galaxies. In contrast to the broad-line focused (L_X-Z_BLR) studies, we find that the L_X-Z_NLR exhibit significant anticorrelations with the Eddington ratio (λ_Edd) and these correlations vary with redshifts. This result indicates that the low-luminous AGNs are more actively undergoing interstellar medium enrichment through star formation in comparison with the more luminous X-ray sources. Our results suggest that the AGN is somehow driving the galaxy chemical enrichment, as a result of the inflow of pristine gas that is diluting the metal rich gas, together with a recent cessation on the circumnuclear star-formation.