Related papers: Abundance Patterns of Heavy Elements in Damped Lym…
An accurate method to measure the abundance of high-redshift galaxies consists in the observation of absorbers along the line of sight toward a background quasar. Here, we present abundance measurements of 13 z>3 sub-Damped Lyman-alpha…
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…
Recent dynamical analysis based on Gaia data have revealed major accretion events in Milky Way's history. Nevertheless, our understanding of the primordial Galaxy is hindered because the bona fide identification of the most metal-poor and…
Large fractions of metals are missing from the observable gas-phase in the interstellar medium (ISM) because they are incorporated into dust grains, a phenomenon called dust depletion. The study of dust depletion in the ISM is important to…
We present chemical abundance measurements in the z_abs=3.35045 Damped Lyman-alpha (DLA) system observed in the UVES spectrum of the BAL quasar BR 1117-1329. We measure a neutral hydrogen column density N(HI)=6.9+/-1.7*10^{20} atoms/cm2 and…
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…
Chemical elements in the hot medium permeating early-type galaxies, groups, and clusters make them an excellent laboratory for studying metal enrichment and cycling processes in the largest scales of the universe. Here, we report the…
High-resolution, high-signal-to-noise (<S/N> = 85) spectra have been obtained for five stars -- CD-24:17504, CD-38:245, CS 22172-002, CS 22885-096, and CS 22949-037 -- having [Fe/H] < -3.5 according to previous lower S/N material. LTE…
Recent data on the high--redshift abundance of damped Ly$\alpha$ systems are compared with theoretical predictions for `blue' (i.e. $n>1$) Mixed Dark Matter models. The results show that decreasing the hot component fraction $\Omega_\nu$…
We obtained comprehensive sets of elemental abundances for eleven damped Ly-alpha systems (DLAs) at z_DLA=1.7-2.5. In Paper I of this series, we showed for three DLA galaxies that we can derive their star formation histories and ages from a…
We study the distribution of star formation rate (SFR) and metallicity of damped Lyman-alpha absorbers (DLAs) using cosmological smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) simulations of the Lambda cold dark matter model. Our simulations include…
We report Keck/ESI and VLT/UVES observations of three super-damped Lyman-alpha quasar absorbers with H I column densities log N(HI) >= 21.7 at redshifts z=2-2.5. All three absorbers show similar metallicities (-1.3 to -1.5 dex), and dust…
We present chemical abundance analyses of sodium, iron-peak and neutron-capture elements for 97 kinematically selected thick disk, inner halo and outer halo stars with metallicities -3.3<[Fe/H]<-0.5. The main aim of this study is to examine…
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…
We present HIRES observations for 30 damped Lyman alpha systems, selected on the basis of their large metal column densities from previous, lower resolution data. The measured metal column densities for Fe, Zn, S, Si, Cr, Mn, and Ni are…
A key component of the baryon cycle in galaxies is the depletion of metals from the gas to the dust phase in the neutral ISM. The METAL (Metal Evolution, Transport and Abundance in the Large Magellanic Cloud) program on the Hubble Space…
As an investigation of the origin of ``$\alpha$-poor'' halo stars, we analyze kinematic and abundance data for 73 intermediate metallicity stars ($-1 >$ [Fe/H] $\geq -2$) selected from Paper I of this series. We find evidence for a…
A study of gas-phase element abundances reported in the literature for 17 different elements sampled over 243 sight lines in the local part of our Galaxy reveals that the depletions into solid form (dust grains) are extremely well…
We present Keck/HIRES abundance measurements and metal-line kinematic profiles of the damped Lyman alpha systems (DLAs) towards the quasars Q0933+733 (z_abs=1.479) and Q0948+433 (z_abs=1.233). These two DLAs have among the five highest HI…
Essentially all high-redshift galaxies show evidence for strong large-scale outflows that should have a profound effect on the structure and kinematics of both the galaxies themselves and their environment. The interstellar absorption…