Metal-enriched Galaxies in the First ~1 Billion Years: Evidence of a Smooth Metallicity Evolution at z ~ 5

TL;DR

This study measures element abundances in high-redshift galaxies to show that metallicity evolves smoothly over the first billion years, with implications for galaxy evolution and nucleosynthesis.

Contribution

It provides new abundance measurements at z > 4.5, doubling existing data, and demonstrates a smooth metallicity evolution at z ~ 5, challenging previous notions of rapid changes.

Findings

Metallicity at z=4.8 is consistent with lower redshift trends.

[C/O] ratios align with very metal-poor DLAs.

Progenitor star masses are estimated around 12-17 solar masses.

Abstract

We present seven new abundance measurements of the elements O, C and Si at z > 4.5, doubling the existing sample of weakly depleted elements in gas-rich galaxies, in order to constrain the first ~1 billion years of cosmic metal evolution. These measurements are based on quasar spectra of damped Lyman-alpha absorbers (DLAs) and sub-DLAs obtained with the Magellan Inamori Kyocera Echelle (MIKE) and Magellan Echellette (MagE) spectrographs on Magellan-South, and the X-Shooter spectrograph on the Very Large Telescope. We combine these new measurements with those drawn from the literature to estimate the NHI-weighted binned mean metallicity of -1.51 +\- 0.18 at z = 4.8. This metallicity value is in excellent agreement with the prediction from lower redshift DLAs, supporting the interpretation that the metallicity evolution is smooth at z ~ 5, rather than showing a sudden decline at z > 4.7. Furthermore, the metallicity evolution trends for the DLAs and sub-DLAs are similar within our uncertainties. We also find that the [C/O] ratios for z ~ 5 DLAs are consistent with those of the very metal-poor DLAs. Additionally, using [C/O] and [Si/O] to constrain the nucleosynthesis models, we estimate that the probability distributions of the progenitor star masses for three relatively metal-poor DLAs are centered around 12 M_{\odot} to 17 M_{\odot}. Finally, the z ~ 5 absorbers show a different metallicity-velocity dispersion relation than lower redshift DLAs, suggesting that they may be tracing a different population of galaxies.