Description
Constraining metal enrichment across cosmic time is an essential ingredient in understanding galaxy evolution. Acquiring high-quality data is crucial for this, and JWST has generated significant progress in this field. Concurrently, a growing population of high-redshift Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) has emerged, many of which exhibit interesting patterns of elemental metallicity. Works identifying these include Scholtz+23, which introduced a sample of 41 Type-II AGN candidates spanning 1<z<10.
This talk will focus on the characterisation of these objects from Scholtz+23 using spectrophotometric analysis and the SED fitting code BEAGLE-AGN (Vidal-García,Curtis-Lake&Plat+24), an AGN extension of BEAGLE (Bayesian Analysis of Galaxy SEDs; Chevallard&Charlot2016). BEAGLE-AGN can characterise Type-II AGN by retrieving physical parameters of the NLR. By applying this tool to these AGN candidates, we can simultaneously extract information on their AGN-related properties and star formation activity, including ISM gas-phase metallicity, stellar mass, and star formation rate.
Constraints on NLR metallicities will enable us to populate the high-redshift mass-metallicity plane for AGN. Comparing HII-region and NLR metallicities simultaneously will provide unique commentary on topics such as inside-out growth. Additionally, AGN candidates from Scholtz+23 will be investigated for potentially non-standard elemental abundances, as done in Silcock+24. This adds to the already growing discussion regarding elemental enhancement in AGN (Isobe+25, Cameron+23), thereby exploring the important intersections between metallicity, abundances and AGN through a coevolutionary lens.
By combining JWST observations of high-redshift AGN with BEAGLE-AGN, we can explore areas such as metal enrichment of both host ISM and AGN NLR, in important epochs of the Universe's history.
