The ALPINE-CRISTAL-JWST Survey: The Fast Metal Enrichment of Massive Galaxies at z~5
Authors
Andreas L. Faisst
Lun-Jun Liu
Yohan Dubois
Omima Osman
Andrea Pallottini
Livia Vallini
Seiji Fujimoto
Bahram Mobasher
Wuji Wang
Yu-Heng Lin
Ricardo O. Amorín
Manuel Aravena
R. J. Assef
Andrew J. Battisti
Matthieu Béthermin
Médéric Boquien
Paolo Cassata
Elisabete da Cunha
Poulomi Dam
Gabriella de Lucia
Ilse De Looze
Miroslava Dessauges-Zavadsky
Andrea Ferrara
Kyle Finner
Fabio Fontanot
Michele Ginolfi
Diego A. Gómez-Espinoza
Carlotta Gruppioni
Nicol Gutiérrez-Vera
Ali Hadi
Rodrigo Herrera-Camus
Michaela Hirschmann
Eduardo Ibar
Hanae Inami
Jeyhan S. Kartaltepe
Anton M. Koekemoer
Mahsa Kohandel
Lilian L. Lee
Yuan Li
Juan Molina
Ambra Nanni
Desika Narayanan
Francesca Pozzi
Monica Relano
Michael Romano
David B. Sanders
John D. Silverman
Laura Sommovigo
Justin Spilker
Akiyoshi Tsujita
Hannah Übler
Keerthi Vasan G. C.
Enrico Veraldi
Vincente Villanueva
Lizhi Xie
Gianni Zamorani
Abstract
We present the stellar mass-metallicity relation (MZR) and mass-metallicity-star formation relation ("fundamental metallicity relation"; FMR) of 18 massive (log(M/M$_\odot$) = 9.5-11) main-sequence galaxies at z~5 from the ALPINE-CRISTAL-JWST sample. This sample complements recent studies by JWST at up to two orders of magnitude lower stellar masses. The metallicities are derived using strong optical lines, and verified by temperature-based oxygen abundance measurements for five galaxies for which faint auroral lines are detected. We find little evolution at the massive end of the MZR between z~5 and cosmic noon at z~2, suggesting a fast metal enrichment at early times. The FMR at z=5 exhibits a 5x larger scatter (preferentially to lower metallicities) compared the local FMR relation. This scatter can be explained by a bursty star formation and the direct build-up of metals in early galaxies as well as differences in age and outflow efficiencies. Capitalizing on all available samples, we find that the observed MZR and FMR over three orders of stellar mass is generally in good agreement with results from cosmological simulation, although some underestimate the metal enrichment at low stellar masses. This may be due to too efficient metal-rich outflows. We show that the ALPINE-CRISTAL-JWST galaxies likely joined the current FMR at z~10 and will evolve into massive (log(M/M$_\odot$)~11.4) galaxies with super-solar metallicities by z=0.
