We report the measurement of the R3= ≳ 5 ratios for 54 galaxies in the GLIMPSE-D survey. Thanks to gravitational lensing, our sample includes galaxies with -20łesssim _ at z=6-9. We derived oxygen abundances using calibrated relationships. We observe a significant decline in R3 values below muv≳-18, which we interpret as evidence of decreasing metallicities in fainter regimes. We explored four prescription models of the evolution of R3 with UV emission based on the new measurements and results from previous surveys. Applying these models to the GLIMPSE luminosity functions, we measured and extrapolated the ionising photon-production rate, ∋on, of galaxies down to very faint limits (̊m SFR 10^ -3 If our results can be generalised, they indicate a dominant contribution of star-forming galaxies to re-ionisation and are consistent with the recent discovery of ultra-faint metal-poor galaxies. Our measurements of the relative contribution of each luminosity bin show that galaxies with L_ 41-42 dominate at 8<z<9, but the relative contributions become more uniform at 7<z<8. Extreme models either under- or over-estimate the ionising photon budget, while intermediate models align with recent observational constraints.
Korber et al. (Thu,) studied this question.
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