What can we learn from the Nitrogen abundance of High-z galaxies?

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Stiavelli, Massimo, Morishita, Takahiro, Chiaberge, Marco, Leethochawalit, Nicha, Norman, Colin, Ricotti, Massimo, Roberts-Borsani, Guido, Treu, Tommaso, Vanzella, Eros, Wyse, Rosemary F. G., Zhang, Yechi, Boyett, Kit
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866917862982025216
author Stiavelli, Massimo
Morishita, Takahiro
Chiaberge, Marco
Leethochawalit, Nicha
Norman, Colin
Ricotti, Massimo
Roberts-Borsani, Guido
Treu, Tommaso
Vanzella, Eros
Wyse, Rosemary F. G.
Zhang, Yechi
Boyett, Kit
author_facet Stiavelli, Massimo
Morishita, Takahiro
Chiaberge, Marco
Leethochawalit, Nicha
Norman, Colin
Ricotti, Massimo
Roberts-Borsani, Guido
Treu, Tommaso
Vanzella, Eros
Wyse, Rosemary F. G.
Zhang, Yechi
Boyett, Kit
contents We present measurements of the gas-phase Oxygen and Nitrogen abundances obtained by applying the direct method to JWST NIRspec $R\sim1000$ spectroscopy for 6 galaxies at redshift greater than 3. Our measurements are based on rest-frame optical Nitrogen [N II]$_{λ\lambda6548,6583}$ lines and are complemented by 6 additional objects from the literature at $3\leq z \leq 6$. We find that 9 out of 12 objects have values of log(N/O) that are compatible with those found for low-redshift, metal-poor, dwarf galaxies and for HII regions of more luminous local galaxies. However, 3 out of 12 objects have log(N/O) values that are overabundant compared to what is expected on the basis of their Oxygen abundance. We explore a few standard scenarios to explain the observations and conclude that, within the limited statistics available to us, none of them can be definitely excluded even though we prefer dilution by pristine gas infall in between star formation bursts as this is predicted by simulations to take place as a natural part of bursty star formation.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2412_06517
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle What can we learn from the Nitrogen abundance of High-z galaxies?
Stiavelli, Massimo
Morishita, Takahiro
Chiaberge, Marco
Leethochawalit, Nicha
Norman, Colin
Ricotti, Massimo
Roberts-Borsani, Guido
Treu, Tommaso
Vanzella, Eros
Wyse, Rosemary F. G.
Zhang, Yechi
Boyett, Kit
Astrophysics of Galaxies
We present measurements of the gas-phase Oxygen and Nitrogen abundances obtained by applying the direct method to JWST NIRspec $R\sim1000$ spectroscopy for 6 galaxies at redshift greater than 3. Our measurements are based on rest-frame optical Nitrogen [N II]$_{λ\lambda6548,6583}$ lines and are complemented by 6 additional objects from the literature at $3\leq z \leq 6$. We find that 9 out of 12 objects have values of log(N/O) that are compatible with those found for low-redshift, metal-poor, dwarf galaxies and for HII regions of more luminous local galaxies. However, 3 out of 12 objects have log(N/O) values that are overabundant compared to what is expected on the basis of their Oxygen abundance. We explore a few standard scenarios to explain the observations and conclude that, within the limited statistics available to us, none of them can be definitely excluded even though we prefer dilution by pristine gas infall in between star formation bursts as this is predicted by simulations to take place as a natural part of bursty star formation.
title What can we learn from the Nitrogen abundance of High-z galaxies?
topic Astrophysics of Galaxies
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.06517