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Abstract We present the stellar metallicities and multielement abundances (C, Mg, Si, Ca, Ti, Cr, and Fe) of 15 massive (log M / M ⊙ = 10.2–11.2) quiescent galaxies at z = 1–3, derived from ultradeep JWST-SUSPENSE spectra. Compared to quiescent galaxies at z ∼ 0, these galaxies exhibit a deficiency of 0.26 ± 0.04 dex in C/H, 0.16 ± 0.03 dex in Fe/H, and 0.07 ± 0.04 dex in Mg/H, implying rapid formation and quenching before significant enrichment from asymptotic giant branch stars and Type Ia supernovae. Additionally, we find that galaxies forming at higher redshift consistently show higher Mg/Fe and lower Fe/H and Mg/H, regardless of their observed redshift. The evolution in Fe/H and C/H is therefore primarily driven by lower-redshift samples naturally including galaxies with longer star formation timescales. In contrast, the lower Mg/H likely reflects earlier-forming galaxies expelling larger gas reservoirs during their quenching phase. Consequently, the mass–metallicity relation, primarily reflecting Mg/H, is somewhat lower at z = 1–3 compared to the lower-redshift relation. Finally, we compare our results to standard stellar population modeling approaches employing solar abundance patterns and nonparametric star formation histories (using Prospector ). Our simple stellar population (SSP)-equivalent ages agree with the mass-weighted ages from Prospector , while the metallicities disagree significantly. Nonetheless, the metallicities better reflect Fe/H than total Z /H. We also find that the star formation timescales inferred from elemental abundances are significantly shorter than those from Prospector , and we discuss the resulting implications for the early formation of massive galaxies.
Beverage et al. (Wed,) studied this question.