Related papers: Chemical Abundances in High-Redshift Neutral Cloud…
The measurement of chemical abundances in planetary nebulae in nearby galaxies is now relatively straightforward. The challenge is to use these chemical abundances to infer the chemical evolution of their host galaxies. At this point, our…
An intriguing fact about cosmic gas clouds is that they all appear to have neutral (atomic) hydrogen column densities smaller than 10^{22} cm^{-2}. Observations of damped Ly-alpha (DLA) absorption systems further indicate that the maximum…
The chemical abundances of metal-poor stars provide a great deal of information regarding the individual nucleosynthetic processes that created the observed elements and the overall process of chemical enrichment of the galaxy since the…
Massive BA-type supergiants are among the visually brightest stars in galaxies with active star formation. As such they are versatile tools for studies of stellar and galactochemical evolution. Moreover, they can act as distance indicators…
The accretion of a cloud of hydrogen at the surface of a small, heavy star produces a high energy mostly dissipated by electromagnetic radiation. The combination of the absorption and the redshift of this radiation by hydrogen explains all…
It has now become recognised that damped Lyman alpha systems play an important role in helping us unravel the origin of chemical elements. In this presentation, we describe the main results of a recently completed survey of the most…
Proximate molecular quasar absorbers (PH2) are an intriguing population of absorption systems recently uncovered through strong H2 absorption at small velocity separation from the background quasars. We performed a multi-wavelength…
Quasars are powerful systems whose spectrum is rich of metal features that allow us to investigate the chemical evolution of galaxies at very high redshift, even close to the reionization epoch. I review the main observational constraints…
We present new elemental abundance studies of seven damped Lyman-alpha systems (DLAs). Together with the four DLAs analyzed in Dessauges-Zavadsky et al. (2004), we have a sample of eleven DLA galaxies with uniquely comprehensive and…
We are encouraged by the improving abundance measurements for quasar damped absorption line systems to start a new study of galaxy chemical evolution from high to low redshifts. Our goal is a simple, robust model based on a synthesis of our…
Spectroscopic observations of distant quasars have resulted in the detection of molecular hydrogen in intervening damped Lyman-alpha absorption clouds (DLAs). We use observations compiled from different experimental groups to show that the…
The chemical composition of high-redshift galaxies is an important property that gives clues to their past history and future evolution. Measuring abundances in distant galaxies with current techniques is often a challenge, and the…
Measurements of element abundances in damped Lyman alpha systems are providing new means to investigate the chemical evolution of galaxies, particularly at early times. We review progress in this area, concentrating on recent efforts to…
The past few years have seen a steady progress in the determination of element abundances at high redshifts, with new and more accurate measures of metallicities in star-forming galaxies, in QSO absorbers, and in the intergalactic medium.…
We study the Oxygen and Nitrogen abundances in the interstellar medium of high-redshift galaxies. We use high resolution and high signal-to-noise ratio spectra of Damped Lyman-alpha (DLA) systems detected along the line-of-sight to quasars…
In typical astrophysical environments, the abundance of heavy elements ranges from 0.001 to 2 times the solar concentration. Lower abundances have been seen in select stars in the Milky Way's halo and in two quasar absorption systems at…
We investigate the possibility to search for metal-poor high column density (> 10^{23} cm^{-2}) clouds at high redshift (z) by using gamma ray burst (GRB) afterglows. Such clouds could be related to primeval galaxies which may cause a burst…
Nitrogen is the fifth most abundant element in the Universe, yet the gas-phase chemistry of N-bearing species remains poorly understood. Nitrogen hydrides are key molecules of nitrogen chemistry. Their abundance ratios place strong…
We have measured the abundances of Zn, Si, Mn, Cr, Fe, and Ni in three damped Lyman alpha systems at redshifts z < 1 from high resolution echelle spectra of QSOs recorded with the Keck I telescope. In all three cases the abundances of Cr,…
For more than 140 years the chemical composition of our Sun has been considered typical of solar-type stars. Our highly differential elemental abundance analysis of unprecedented accuracy (~0.01 dex) of the Sun relative to solar twins,…