The ALPINE-CRISTAL-JWST Survey: Gas-phase abundance gradients of main-sequence star-forming galaxies and their kinematics at 4 < z < 6

June 2026 • 2026A&A...710A.310L

Authors • Lee, L. L. • Förster Schreiber, N. M. • Fujimoto, S. • Faisst, A. L. • Herrera-Camus, R. • Genzel, R. • Tacconi, L. J. • Lutz, D. • Renzini, A. • Sanders, R. • Wisnioski, E. • Wuyts, S. • Parlanti, E. • Jones, G. • Übler, H. • Liu, D. • Chen, J. • Davies, R. I. • Tozzi, G. • Burkert, A. • Price, S. H. • Aravena, M. • Boquien, M. • Béthermin, M. • da Cunha, E. • Davies, R. L. • De Looze, I. • Dessauges-Zavadsky, M. • Ferrara, A. • Fisher, D. B. • Gillman, S. • Ginolfi, M. • Ibar, E. • Koekemoer, A. M. • Molina, J. • Naab, T. • Relaño, M. • Riechers, D. A. • Sanders, D. B. • Spilker, J. S. • Vallini, L. • Zamorani, G. • Nanni, A. • Dam, P. • Diaz-Santos, T. • Gómez-Espinoza, D. • Hadi, A. • Ikeda, R. • Posses, A. • Romano, M. • Sternberg, A. • Villanueva, V. • Wang, W.

Abstract • We present gas-phase radial metallicity profiles for 20 main-sequence galaxies at 4 < z < 6 primarily based on JWST NIRSpec IFU observations obtained as part of the JWST-ALPINE-CRISTAL programme. Our study aims to connect the metallicity gradients of these galaxies with their kinematic properties from [C II] 158 μm ALMA observations. We mapped the radial profiles of oxygen abundance using the strong-line method, leveraging the rich set of rest-frame optical emission lines. Linear fits to the annular-binned radial profiles show that, on average, the metallicity gradients are slightly positive with a median of +0.039 ± 0.010 dex kpc⁻¹. However, only three galaxies show a gradient > 0.05 dex kpc⁻¹ at 1σ, and none have a significant negative gradient. There are no substantial systematic offsets in gradients when using different line diagnostics. We investigated the correlation between the metallicity gradients and the intrinsic gas velocity dispersion σ₀ as well as the V_rot/σ₀ ratio of the disks. Combining our sample with mass-matched literature samples at 3 ≲ z ≲ 7, we found a negative shallow correlation between V_rot/σ₀ and the metallicity gradients, but no strong relationships with σ₀. As V_rot/σ₀ increases towards later cosmic times, the observed negative trend with V_rot/σ₀ is consistent with the overall cosmic evolution of metallicity gradients from high to low redshifts. This suggests that disk maturity plays a crucial role in shaping the radial metallicity gradients. We do not find the metallicity gradients of disk galaxies to be significantly different from non-disk galaxies, which could be attributed to the frequent accretion events that took place in these gas-rich systems. Additionally, we find no strong dependence of metallicity gradients on stellar mass and only a marginal positive dependence on specific star-formation rate. Our study extends the efforts to connect the internal kinematics of galaxies with their gas-phase chemical enrichment at kiloparsec scales from cosmic noon to z > 4.

Links

• POSTSCRIPT https://www.aanda.org/10.1051/0004-6361/202557589/postscript
• PREPRINT http://arxiv.org/abs/2603.13493