Nitrogen is an important element in various fields of stellar and Galactic astronomy , and the solar nitrogen abundance is crucial as a yardstick for comparing different objects in the cosmos .
In order to obtain a precise and accurate value for this abundance , we carried out N I line formation calculations in a 3D radiative-hydrodynamic stagger model solar atmosphere , in full 3D non-local thermodynamic equilibrium ( non-LTE ) , using a model atom that includes physically-motivated descriptions for the inelastic collisions of N I with free electrons and with neutral hydrogen .
We selected five N I lines of high excitation energy to study in detail , based on their strengths and on their being relatively free of blends .
We found that these lines are slightly strengthened from non-LTE photon losses and from 3D granulation effects , resulting in negative abundance corrections of around -0.01 \mathrm { dex } and -0.04 \mathrm { dex } respectively .
Our advocated solar nitrogen abundance is \log { \epsilon _ { \mathrm { N } } } = 7.77 , with the systematic 1 \sigma uncertainty estimated to be 0.05 \mathrm { dex } .
This result is consistent with earlier studies after correcting for differences in line selections and equivalent widths .