Related papers: Chemical Abundances in High-Redshift Neutral Cloud…
Depending on the density reached in the cores of neutron stars, such objects may contain stable phases of novel matter found nowhere else in the Universe. This article gives a brief overview of these phases of matter and discusses…
While we observe a large amount of cold interstellar gas and dust in a subset of the early-type galaxy (ETG) population, the source of this material remains unclear. The two main, competing scenarios are external accretion of lower mass,…
We investigate the evolutionary history of the Universe's metal content focusing on the chemical abundance of several elements (N, O, S, Si, Fe, Cr, Zn) taken from observational data and predictions from chemical evolution models. The…
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…
Metals -- heavy elements synthesized during various phases of stellar evolution or during supernova explosions -- play a fundamental role in shaping galaxy evolution. In fact, their relative abundances, spatial distribution, and scaling…
A representative sample of unevolved early B-type stars in nearby OB associations and the field is analysed to unprecedented precision using NLTE techniques. The resulting chemical composition is found to be more metal-rich and much more…
The oldest, most metal-poor stars in the Galactic halo and satellite dwarf galaxies present an opportunity to explore the chemical and physical conditions of the earliest star forming environments in the Universe. We review the fields of…
In view of their nature, planetary nebulae have very short lifetimes, and the chemical abundances derived so far have a natural bias favoring younger objects. In this work, we report physical parameters and abundances for a sample of old…
Clouds form in the atmospheres of planets where they can determine the observable spectra, the albedo and phase curves. Cloud properties are determined by the local thermodynamical and chemical conditions of an atmospheric gas. A retrieval…
Chemically peculiar stars define a class of stars that show unusual elemental abundances due to stellar photospheric effects and not due to natal variations. In this paper, we compare the elemental abundance patterns of the ultra metal-poor…
Context. Classical chemically peculiar stars exhibit atmospheres that are often structured by the effects of atomic diffusion. As a result of these elemental diffusion and horizontal abundance variations, photospheric temperature varies at…
The physical processes driving chemical evolution in the Milky Way can be probed using the distribution of abundances in low-mass FGK type stars in space phase at different times. During their final stages of evolution stars experience…
High redshift quasars mark the locations where massive galaxies are rapidly being assembled and forming stars. There is growing evidence that quasar environments are metal-rich out to redshifts of at least five. The gas-phase metallicities…
Molecules dominate the cooling function of neutral metal-poor gas at high density. Observation of molecules at high redshift is thus an important tool toward understanding the physical conditions prevailing in collapsing gas. Up to now,…
Many chemical models of dense interstellar clouds predict that the majority of gas-phase elemental nitrogen should be present as N2, with an abundance approximately five orders of magnitude less than that of hydrogen. As a homonuclear…
The pre-Galactic abundance of lithium offers a unique window into non-thermal cosmological processes. The primordial Li abundance is guaranteed to be present and probes big bang nucleosynthesis (BBN), while an additional Li component is…
Damped Lyman-alpha systems seen in spectra of background quasars are generally thought to represent high redshift counterparts of present-day galaxies. We summarize observations of heavy element abundances in damped Lyman-alpha systems. The…
In order to recognize environmental effects on the evolution of dwarf galaxies in clusters of galaxies, it is first necessary to quantify the properties of objects which have evolved in relative isolation. With oxygen abundance as the gauge…
Plausible ratios of deuterium to hydrogen D/H as a function of metallicity, time, and redshift are investigated. Guided by the heavy element abundance patterns observed locally in Galactic dwarf stars and at large redshift in quasi-stellar…
Ground based optical observations have yielded considerable information on the statistics of damped-lyman alpha systems. In particular these systems are known to be the dominant repository of the observed neutral gas at high redshift.…