Related papers: Where are the missing cosmic metals ?
The nitrogen and oxygen abundances in the warm ionized gas of low-mass, metal-poor galaxies appear surprisingly homogeneous considering the prevalence of large HII regions, which contain hundreds of massive stars. Of the six galaxies with…
We present a direct measurement of the metallicity distribution function for the high redshift intergalactic medium. We determine the shape of this function using survival statistics, which account for both detections and non-detections of…
In the current cosmological model, only the three lightest elements were created in the first few minutes after the Big Bang; all other elements were produced later in stars. To date, however, heavy elements have been observed in all…
Elliptical galaxies probably host the most metal rich stellar populations in the Universe. The processes leading to both the formation and the evolution of such stars are discussed by means of a new multi-zone photo-chemical evolution…
The discovery of metal-poor stars (where metal is any element more massive than helium) has enabled astronomers to probe the chemical enrichment history of the Milky Way. More recently, element abundances in gas inside high-redshift…
The earliest assembly of the Milky Way remains poorly understood, yet the spatial, chemical, and kinematic properties of its most metal-poor stars provide a unique fossil record of its proto-Galaxy phase. Understanding how this ancient…
While the average metallicity of the intergalactic medium rises above Z~10^{-3} Zsun by the end of the reionization, pockets of metal-free gas can still exist at later times. We quantify the presence of a long tail in the formation rate of…
In currently popular cosmological scenarios -- all variants of the cold dark matter (CDM) cosmogony -- some time beyond a redshift of 15, stars within the numerous small halos that condense with virial temperatures ~1e4 K created the first…
We study the spatial distribution of Galactic metal-free stars by combining an extremely high-resolution (7.8 X 10^5 solar masses per particle) Cold Dark Matter N-body simulation of the Milky-Way with a semi-analytic model of metal…
Recent evidence on the metal content of the high-redshift Lyman alpha forest seen in quasar spectra suggests that an early generation of galaxies enriched the intergalactic medium (IGM) at z ~ 5. We calculate the number of supernovae that…
Intrinsic emission and absorption lines of QSOs provide several independent probes of the metal abundances in QSO environments. They indicate that the metallicities are typically solar or higher out to redshifts z > 4. These results support…
We investigate the evolution of the metallicity of the intergalactic medium (IGM) with particular emphasis on its spatial distribution. We propose that metal enrichment occurs as a two step process. First, supernova (SN) explosions eject…
Numerical simulations of standard cosmological scenarios have now reached the degree of sophistication required to provide tentative answers to the fundamental question: Where and when were the heavy elements formed? Averaging globally,…
It has been proposed that very massive stars (VMSs) dominated heavy element production until a metallicity threshold corresponding to [Fe/H]=-3 was reached. This results in a prompt (P) inventory of elements, the abundances of which were…
We calculate the stellar mass-metallicity relation at five epochs ranging to z~2.3. We quantify evolution in the shape of the mass-metallicity relation as a function of redshift; the mass-metallicity relation flattens at late times. There…
We present models of the cosmological star formation and metal production history of (proto-)galaxies with varying axis ratios. More massive and/or roughly spherical systems reach the threshold-metallicity for a transition to a multi-phase…
The chemical elements are created in nuclear fusion processes in the hot and dense cores of stars. The energy generated through nucleosynthesis allows stars to shine for billions of years. When these stars explode as massive supernovae, the…
In the context of the ``missing metals problem'', the contributions of the UV-selected z=2.2 ``BX'' galaxies and z=2.5 ``distant red galaxies'' (DRGs) have not been discussed previously. Here we show that: (i) DRGs only make a marginal…
Our current knowledge of cosmic star-formation history during the first two billion years (corresponding to redshift z >3) is mainly based on galaxies identified in rest-frame ultraviolet light. However, this population of galaxies is known…
Low and intermediate mass stars with super solar metallicities comprise a known portion of the universe. Yet yields for asymptotic giant branch (AGB) stars with metallicities greater than $Z=0.04$ do not exist in the literature. This…