Related papers: Star formation and chemical evolution of damped Ly…
Using the GAEA semi-analytic model, we analyse the connection between Damped Lyman-$\alpha$ systems (DLAs) and HI in galaxies. Our state-of-the-art semi-analytic model is tuned to reproduce the local galaxy HI mass function, and that also…
We present the chemical abundance measurements of the first large, medium-resolution, uniformly selected damped Lyman alpha system (DLA) survey. The sample contains 99 DLAs towards 89 quasars selected from the SDSS DR5 DLA sample in a…
The chemical abundances in damped Lyman-alpha systems (DLAs) show more than 2 orders of magnitude variation at a given epoch, possibly because DLAs arise in a wide variety of host galaxies. This could significantly bias estimates of…
Relative elemental abundances, and in particular the alpha/Fe ratio, are an important diagnostic tool of the chemical evolution of damped Ly alpha systems (DLAs). The S/Zn ratio is not affected by differential dust depletion and is an…
We present evidence that the cosmological mean metallicity of neutral atomic hydrogen gas shows a sudden decrease at z>4.7 down to <Z>=-2.03(+0.09-0.11), which is 6 sigma deviant from that predicted by a linear fit to the data at lower…
We present the first theoretical study of metals in damped Ly-alpha (DLA) systems at redshift z=7. The features of cold, primordial gas are studied by means of N-body, hydro, chemistry simulations, including atomic and molecular…
Most models of cosmic chemical evolution predict that the mass-weighted mean interstellar metallicity of galaxies should rise with time from a low value $\sim 1/30$ solar at $z \sim 3$ to a nearly solar value at $z = 0$. In the absence of…
In this paper we analyze the kinematics, chemistry, and physical properties of a sample of the most metal-poor damped Lyman-alpha systems (DLAs), to uncover their links to modern-day galaxies. We present evidence that the DLA population as…
We use a model of galaxy disk formation to explore the metallicities, dust content, and neutral-gas mass density of damped Lyman-$\alpha$ (D\lya) absorbers. We find that the [Zn/H] abundance measurements of D\lya systems now available can…
Recent observations have revealed that damped Ly$\alpha$ clouds (DLAs) host star formation activity. In order to examine if such star formation activity can be triggered by ionization fronts, we perform high-resolution hydrodynamics and…
The most metal-poor, high redshift damped Lyman-alpha systems (DLAs) provide a window to study some of the first few generations of stars. In this paper, we present a novel model to investigate the chemical enrichment of the near-pristine…
We study star formation history and stellar metallicity distribution in galaxies in a Lambda cold dark matter universe using a hydrodynamic cosmological simulation. Our model predicts star formation rate declining in time exponentially from…
We have extended our chemical and cosmological galaxy evolution model to calculate the abundance evolution for altogether 16 different elements in spiral galaxies in a chemically consistent way which is a considerable step towards a more…
Damped Ly$\alpha$ absorbers (DLAs) are the highest \HI\ column density (\NHI) absorption line systems detected in the spectra of background quasars. DLAs dominate the neutral gas content of the Universe ($\Omega_{\rm HI}$) and are used to…
We present a high spectral resolution survey of the most metal-poor damped Lyman-alpha absorption systems (DLAs) aimed at probing the nature and nucleosynthesis of the earliest generations of stars. Our survey comprises 22 systems with iron…
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…
We investigate Damped Ly-alpha absorbing galaxies (DLA galaxies) at low redshifts z<1 in the hierarchical structure formation scenario to clarify the nature of DLA galaxies because observational data of such galaxies mainly at low redshifts…
There is accumulating observational evidence suggesting that damped Ly$\alpha$ absorption systems systems are the progenitors of present-day spiral galaxies. We use the observed properties of these systems to place constraints on the…
We argue that the lack of observed damped Lyman alpha (DLA) systems that simultaneously have high HI columns densities and high metallicities results naturally from the formation of molecules in the cold phase of a two-phase atomic medium…
We carried out a comprehensive analysis of the chemical properties of the interstellar medium (ISM) and the stellar population (SP) of current normal galaxies and their progenitors in a hierarchical clustering scenario. We compared the…