Chemically young AGNs at high redshift

  • Published : 2017.04.10

Abstract

Metallicity is one of the most important properties in understanding galaxy evolution. However, measuring metallicity is limited to low redshift (z<3.5) due to the faintness of the metallicity indicators in normal galaxies. For high redshift universe, active galactic nuclei (AGN) can be used to constrain the host galaxy metallicity. Previous studies investigated AGN metallicity using emission line flux ratios (i.e., NV/CIV and FeII/MgII), finding no evolution up to z~6. Those results might be due to selection effect since previous studies are based on very luminous AGNs. The observed luminosity-metallicity relation of AGNs (e.g., Nagao et al. 2006) suggests that luminous AGNs may be already matured at the observed epoch. Considering the luminosity-metallicty relation, we focused on low luminosity AGNs to find young AGNs (i.e., low metallicity). Through the Gemini/GNIRS observation in 2012A and 2015A (K-GMT GN-2015A-Q-203 PI: Shin, J.), we obtained the Gemini/GNIRS data for 7 high redshift AGNs (3.0

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