Related papers: Observational Tests of Intergalactic Enrichment Mo…
Detailed chemical abundances of Galactic stars are needed in order to improve our knowledge of the formation and evolution of our galaxy, the Milky Way. We took advantage of the GIANO archive spectra to select a sample of Galactic disc…
We have performed a detailed statistical study of the evolution of structure in a photoionized intergalactic medium (IGM) using analytical simulations to extend the calculation into the mildly non-linear density regime found to prevail at z…
The large cross-section of the Lyman alpha (Lya) line makes it a sensitive probe of the ionization state of the intergalactic medium (IGM). Here we present the most complete study to date of the IGM Lya opacity, and its application to the…
This paper assesses the implications of a recent discovery (Jenkins 2009) that atomic oxygen is being depleted from diffuse interstellar gas at a rate that cannot be accounted for by its presence in silicate and metallic oxide particles. To…
We report new measurements of the intergalactic medium (IGM) Ly$\alpha$ and Ly$\beta$ effective optical depth at $5.3<z<6.5$, using a new sample of quasar sightlines including 32 quasars at $6.308\le z\le7.00$. These quasars provide a large…
We use the cosmological semi-analytic model (SAM) for galaxy formation presented in Paper I to study the metallicities and abundance ratios of the intracluster medium (ICM) within the hierarchical structure formation paradigm. By requiring…
We investigate whether a single population of first stars could have influenced both the metal enrichment and reionization of the high-redshift intergalactic medium (IGM), by calculating the generated ionizing radiation per unit metal yield…
The chemical evolution of distant galaxies cannot be assessed from observations of individual stars, in contrast to the case of nearby galaxies. On the other hand, the study of the interstellar medium (ISM) offers an alternative way to…
We model the conservation of energy in the framework of the thin layer approximation for two types of interstellar medium (ISM). In particular, we analyse an ISM in the presence of self-gravity and a Gaussian ISM which produces an asymmetry…
We use a semi-analytical approach to simulate absorption spectra of QSOs at high redshifts with the aim of constraining the cosmic reionization history. We consider two physically motivated and detailed reionization histories: (i) an Early…
As building blocks of dust, rocky planets, and even complex life, the chemical elements heavier than hydrogen (H) and helium (He) - called "metals" in astronomy - play an essential role in our Universe and its evolution. Up to Fe and Ni,…
We present a detailed analysis of the ionization and thermal structure of the intergalactic medium (IGM) around a high-redshift QSO using a large suite of cosmological, multi-frequency radiative transfer (RT) simulations, exploring the…
The methods by which one characterizes the distribution of matter in cosmological simulations is intrinsically different from how one performs the same task observationally. In this paper, we make substantial steps towards comparing…
We perform cosmological simulations of galaxies forming at z=3 using the hydrodynamics grid code, Enzo. By selecting the largest galaxies in the volume to correspond to Lyman-break galaxies, we construct observational spectra of the HI flux…
We present a physically-based absorption-line model for the spectroscopic study of the intergalactic medium (IGM). This model adopts results from Cloudy simulations and theoretical calculations by Gnat and Sternberg (2007) to examine the…
We present a project aimed at studying the structure, dust distribution, ionization state, and kinematics of a representative sample of 22 ULIRGs. The galaxies in the sample undergo different merger phases (they are evenly divided between…
Chemical abundance radial gradients provide key information on how the processes that affect chemical enrichment of the gas-phase interstellar medium (ISM) act at different galaxy scales. Whereas in the last decades there has been an…
Oxygen abundances [12+log(O/H)] in the interstellar medium of a large sample of distant (z>0.4) luminous infrared galaxies (LIRGs) were estimated from their extinction corrected emission-line ratios, on the basis of the VLT/FORS2 spectra…
Twenty years of high-resolution spectroscopy at the 8-10 m class telescopes have drastically expanded our view of the gas-phase metallicity in the z>2 universe. This contribution briefly summarizes how these studies reveal a widespread…
The density and temperature properties of the intergalactic medium (IGM) reflect the heating and ionization history during cosmological structure formation, and are primarily probed by the Lyman-alpha forest of neutral hydrogen absorption…