EIGER. II. First Spectroscopic Characterization of the Young Stars and Ionized Gas Associated with Strong Hβ and O iii Line Emission in Galaxies at z = 5–7 with JWST

Abstract We present emission-line measurements and physical interpretations for a sample of 117 O iii emitting galaxies at z = 5.33–6.93, using the first deep JWST/NIRCam wide-field slitless spectroscopic observations. Our 9.7 hr integration is centered upon the z = 6.3 quasar J0100+2802—the first of six fields targeted by the EIGER survey—and covers λ = 3–4 μ m. We detect 133 O iii doublets, but close pairs motivated by their small scale clustering excess. The galaxies are characterized by a UV luminosity M UV ∼ −19.6 (−17.7 to −22.3), stellar mass ∼10 8 (10 6.8−10.1 ) M ⊙ , H β and O iii 4960+5008 EWs ≈ 850 Å (up to 3000 Å), young ages, a highly excited interstellar medium, and low dust attenuations. These high EWs are very rare in the local universe, but we show they are ubiquitous at z ∼ 6 based on the measured number densities. The stacked spectrum reveals H γ and O iii 4364 , which shows that the galaxies are typically dust- and metal-poor (E ( B − V ) = 0.1, 12 + log ( O / H ) = 7.4 ) with a high electron temperature (2 × 10 4 K) and a production efficiency of ionizing photons ( ξ ion = 10 25.3 Hz erg −1 ). We further show the existence of a strong mass–metallicity relation. The properties of the stars and gas in z ∼ 6 galaxies conspire to maximize the O iii output from galaxies, yielding an O iii luminosity density at z ≈ 6 that is significantly higher than that at z ≈ 2. Thus, O iii emission-line surveys with JWST prove a highly efficient method to trace the galaxy density in the Epoch of Reionization.