Potential-driven Metal Cycling: JADES Census of Gas-phase Metallicity for Galaxies at 1 &lt; <i>z</i> &lt; 7

Abstract The gravitational potential is established as a critical determinant of gas-phase metallicity (12+log(O/H)) in low-redshift galaxies, whereas its influence remains unconfirmed at high redshifts. We investigate the correlation between gas-phase metallicity and effective radius ( R e ) for a sample of galaxies with redshifts ranging from 1 to 7, drawn from JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey Data Release 3. We calculate the metallicities using four strong-line methods: N2S2H α , R23, N2, and O3N2. After taking out the evolution of size, we find that the offsets of the mass–size relation ( <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" overflow="scroll"> <mml:mo mathvariant="normal">Δ</mml:mo> <mml:mi>log</mml:mi> <mml:msub> <mml:mrow> <mml:mi>R</mml:mi> </mml:mrow> <mml:mrow> <mml:mi mathvariant="normal">e</mml:mi> </mml:mrow> </mml:msub> </mml:math> ) are significantly negatively correlated with the offset of the mass–metallicity relation ( <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" overflow="scroll"> <mml:mo mathvariant="normal">Δ</mml:mo> <mml:mi>log</mml:mi> <mml:mo stretchy="false">(</mml:mo> <mml:mi mathvariant="normal">O</mml:mi> <mml:mo>/</mml:mo> <mml:mi mathvariant="normal">H</mml:mi> <mml:mo stretchy="false">)</mml:mo> </mml:math> ) for the four metallicity tracers. Regardless of the metallicity tracer used, we obtain Spearman rank p- values much less than 0.01, rejecting the null hypothesis that the observed correlation is statistically nonsignificant and attributable to random chance. This is also true for galaxies with z &gt; 3, with p- values less than 0.05 for the four metallicity tracers. We for the first time find evidence of size playing a key role in determining gas-phase metallicity toward cosmic dawn, suggesting that the gravitational potential influences galaxies' material-exchange processes with the surrounding environment in the very early Universe.