The abundance of iron-peak elements and the dust composition in eta Carinae: manganese

We study the chemical abundances of the strontium filament found in the ejecta of eta Carinae. In particular, we derive the abundances of iron-peak elements from the spectra of their singly ionized ions present in the optical/infrared (IR) spectra. In this paper we analyse the spectrum of Mn II using a new non-local thermodynamic equilibrium (non-LTE) model for this system. In constructing this models we carried out theoretical calculations of radiative transition rates and electron impact excitation rate coefficients. We find that relative to Ni the gas-phase abundance ratio of Mn is roughly solar, similar to the Cr abundance but in contrast to the large enhancements in the abundances of Sc and Ti. We interpret this result as an indication of non-equilibrium condensation in the ejecta of eta Carinae