Tracing nitrogen enrichment across cosmic time with JWST

We present a comprehensive analysis of the nitrogen-to-oxygen (N/O) abundance ratio in a sample of ∼660 star-forming galaxies at redshift z ∼ 1 − 6, with a median redshift of ⟨ z ⟩ = 3.0, using deep JWST/NIRSpec spectroscopy. Leveraging detections of faint auroral emission lines in 92 galaxies at z > 1 from both the MARTA survey and a large compilation of high-redshift literature objects, we derived direct electron-temperature-based abundances for nitrogen and oxygen using rest-frame optical lines. We establish the first high-redshift calibrations of strong-line N/O diagnostics based on ‘direct’ abundance measurements, finding a mild evolution for the N2O2 = log([N II ] λ 6585/[O II ] λλ 3727,3729) diagnostic and no clear evolution for the N2S2 = log([N II ] λ 6585/[S II ] λλ 6717,6731) diagnostic compared to local realisations. We then investigated the N/O–O/H relation across cosmic time using both ‘direct’ abundances and strong-line-based measurements (additional 535 galaxies). We find evidence of mild but systematic nitrogen enhancement at high redshift: galaxies at z > 1 exhibit N/O ratios elevated by ∼0.18 dex (median offset) at fixed O/H compared to local trends, with a more pronounced enhancement at low metallicity (i.e. 12 + log(O/H)≲8.1), where the offset reaches up to ∼0.4−0.5 dex. We considered several scenarios to explain the observed trends, including bursty star formation, differential metal loading, and inflows of pristine gas. Our results provide the most extensive confirmation of elevated N/O ratios at high-redshift to date based on rest-optical diagnostics and within a self-consistent frame.