Affiliation: The University of Texas at Austin

Contribution: Oral

Title: Observational Benchmarks of Chemical Evolution from Extreme Emission Line Galaxies

Abstract: Chemical abundances encode the integrated star formation over the lifetimes of galaxies. Since stars produce different metals, e.g., nitrogen, carbon, and oxygen, at different times, the relative abundances of C/O and N/O act as clocks benchmarking important episodes throughout the star formation history. For example, N/O describes the relative ratio of moderately old stars (>100 Myr) to very young stars (<10 Myr). Recently, high-redshift (z>6) JWST observations of extreme emission line galaxies have found extremely strong high-energy C, N, and O emission lines that are indicative of super-solar relative abundance ratios. This poses a contradiction: how did such young galaxies become enriched so early? I will present relative ISM abundances and stellar population analysis from high-resolution HST and JWST rest-frame UV spectra and their implications for the chemical evolution, star formation histories, and feedback prescriptions of high-z galaxies. Such detailed studies of the mechanisms that produce the extreme emission lines are critical to interpreting high-z spectroscopic samples and understanding the chemical enrichment of the first galaxies.

This contribution can be found here (when available).