An observed link between AGN Eddington ratio and [NII] λ6583/Hα at 0.6

We present the observed relationship between Eddington ratio (${\lambda}Edd$) and optical narrow-emission-line ratio ([NII] ${\lambda}6583/H{\alpha}$) of X-ray-selected unobscured active galactic nuclei (AGN) at 0.6 < z < 1.7 using 27 near-infrared spectra from the Fiber Multi-Object Spectrograph mounted on the Subaru telescope along with 26 additional sources from the literature. We show that the ${\lambda}Edd$ and [NII] ${\lambda}6583/H{\alpha}$ ratio at 0.6 < z < 1.7 exhibits a similar distribution of ${\lambda}Edd$-[NII] ${\lambda}6583/H{\alpha}$ anti-correlation that has been found for local ( = 0.036), hard X-ray selected AGN. The observed anti-correlation suggests that [N II] ${\lambda}6583/H{\alpha}$ optical narrow-line ratio in the AGN host galaxy may carry important information about the accretion state of the central supermassive black hole, suggesting the observational hint of consistent relationship from local to z ~ 1.7. Further study is necessary to determine whether the ${\lambda}Edd$-[N II] ${\lambda}6583/H{\alpha}$ correlation in high-redshift still holds at ${\log}{\lambda}Edd$ < -2 compared to local AGN.