The JWST EXCELS survey: Probing strong-line diagnostics and the chemical evolution of galaxies over cosmic time using Te-metallicities
D. Scholte, F. Cullen, A. C. Carnall, K. Z. Arellano-C\'ordova, T. M., Stanton, L. Barrufet, C. T. Donnan, J. S. Dunlop, H. -H. Leung, D. J. McLeod,, R. J. McLure, J. M. Moustakas, C. L. Pollock, A. E. Shapley, S. Stevenson and, H. Zou

TL;DR
This study analyzes JWST/NIRSpec spectra of high-redshift galaxies to evaluate and improve strong-line metallicity diagnostics, revealing biases in existing methods and proposing new calibrations to better understand galaxy evolution over cosmic time.
Contribution
Introduces a new redshift-independent strong-line calibration and diagnostic, and assesses the evolution of metallicity relations in early galaxies using JWST data.
Findings
Many strong-line calibrations are biased at high redshift.
The $\u00a0 ilde{R}$ calibration reduces ionization dependence.
Evidence suggests deviations from the fundamental metallicity relation at $z > 4$.
Abstract
We present an analysis of the rest-frame optical spectra of 22 [OIII]4363 detected galaxies in the redshift range (with = 4.05) from JWST/NIRSpec medium-resolution observations taken as part of the EXCELS survey. To supplement these high-redshift sources, we also consider a sample of 782 local [OIII]4363 detected galaxies from the DESI Early Data Release. Our analysis demonstrates that many strong-line calibrations are biased in the early Universe due to the systematic evolution in ionization conditions with redshift. However, the recently introduced calibration mostly removes the dependence on ionization state and can be considered a largely redshift-independent calibration. In a similar spirit, we introduce a new strong-line diagnostic, , which can be used to robustly estimate metallicities when the…
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Taxonomy
TopicsAstronomy and Astrophysical Research · Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies · Calibration and Measurement Techniques
