The Abundance of Interstellar Fluorine and Its Implications

We report results from a survey of neutral fluorine (F I) in the interstellar medium. Data from FUSE were used to analyze 26 lines of sight lying in both the galactic disk and halo, including lines to Wolf-Rayet stars and through known supernova remnants. The equivalent widths of the fluorine resonance lines at 951.871 and 954.827 Å were measured or assigned upper limits and combined with a nitrogen curve of growth to obtain F I column densities. These column densities were then used to calculate fluorine depletions. Comparisons are made to the previous study of F I by Federman and coworkers and implications for F I formation and depletion are discussed.