Related papers: Metals, depletion and dimming: decrypting dust
The evolution of the cosmic dust content and the cycle between metals and dust in the interstellar medium (ISM) play a fundamental role in galaxy evolution. The chemical enrichment of the Universe can be traced through the evolution of the…
The metallicity and gas density dependence of interstellar depletions, the dust-to-gas (D/G), and dust-to-metal (D/M) ratios have important implications for how accurately we can trace the chemical enrichment of the universe; either by…
We study metal depletion due to dust in the interstellar medium (ISM) to infer the properties of dust grains and characterize the metal and dust content of galaxies, down to low metallicity and intermediate redshift z. We provide metal…
Large fractions of metals are missing from the observable gas-phase in the interstellar medium (ISM) because they are incorporated into dust grains, a phenomenon called dust depletion. The study of dust depletion in the ISM is important to…
The cycling of metals between interstellar gas and dust is a critical aspect of the baryon cycle of galaxies, yet our understanding of this process is limited. This study focuses on understanding dust depletion effects in the low…
Context. Several issues regarding the nature of dust at high redshift remain unresolved: its composition, its production and growth mechanisms, and its effect on background sources. Aims. We provide a more accurate relation between dust…
We present a novel method to characterize dust depletion, namely, the depletion of metals into dust grains. We used observed correlations among relative abundances combining a total of 17 metals in diverse galactic environments, including…
In this paper we point out a previously unnoticed anticorrelation between the observed abundance ratio [X/Zn] (where Zn is assumed to be undepleted and X stands for the refractories Fe, Cr and Ni) and metal column density…
Investigating the chemical complexity of the interstellar medium (ISM) is key for understanding its physical nature and evolution. In this work, we study parsec-scale interstellar dust clouds in the neutral ISM of the Milky Way using two…
The chemical enrichment of dust and metals in the interstellar medium (ISM) of galaxies throughout cosmic time is one of the key driving processes of galaxy evolution. Here we study the evolution of the gas-phase metallicities, dust-to-gas…
While it is well recognized that both the Galactic interstellar extinction curves and the gas-phase abundances of dust-forming elements exhibit considerable variations from one sight line to another, as yet most of the dust extinction…
We used the photometric database of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) to estimate the reddening of 13 SDSS quasars selected on the basis of the presence of zinc absorption lines in an intervening Damped Ly alpha (DLA) system. In 5 of…
The primordial abundance of deuterium (D/H) yields a measure of the density of baryons in the universe and is an important complement to determinations from cosmic microwave background (CMB) experiments. Indeed, the current small sample of…
The dust abundance of the interstellar medium plays an important role in galaxy physics, the chemical evolution of matter and the absorption and re-emission of stellar light. The last years have seen a surge in observational and theoretical…
A key component of the baryon cycle in galaxies is the depletion of metals from the gas to the dust phase in the neutral ISM. The METAL (Metal Evolution, Transport and Abundance in the Large Magellanic Cloud) program on the Hubble Space…
We analyse a sample of 24 damped Lyman-alpha (DLA)/moderate DLA systems at 0.3<z<2.2, all with measurement of the weak MnII absorption lines, to investigate which elemental ratios could possibly be used as tracers of either dust depletion…
We have derived the column densities of heavy elements in three gamma-ray burst (GRB) optical transients, associated with the circumburst or interstellar medium (ISM) of the host galaxy. In comparison with the same elements observed in…
Depletion studies provide a way to understand the chemical composition of interstellar dust grains. We here examine 23 gamma-ray bursts (GRB) optical afterglow spectra (spanning 0.6<z<5.0) and compare their silicon and iron dust-phase…
Among the key parameters defining the ISM of galaxies is the fraction of the metals that are locked up in dust: the metals-to-dust ratio. This ratio bears not only on the ISM and its evolution, but particularly on the origin of cosmic dust.…
We show that the extinction of quasar absorbers increases exponentially with the logarithmic column density of any volatile metal (e.g. zinc), with a charateristic turning point above which the quasars are severely dimmed. We derive the…