The solar abundance of iron and the photospheric model

Numerous papers on the solar photospheric abundance of iron have recently been published leading to a longstanding debate concerning rather different results obtained from the analyses of Fe i lines and, to a lesser extent, of Fe ii lines. Based on a set of 65 solar Fe i lines, with accurate transition probabilities as well as new accurate damping constants, we construct a new empirical photospheric model. We succeed to reconcile abundance results obtained from low and high excitation Fe i lines as well as from Fe ii lines and derive a solar photospheric abundance of iron, AFe = 7.50 ± 0.05, which perfectly agrees with the meteoritic value.