Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics
Scientific paper
2005-04-26
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astrophysics
6 pages,3 figures, To appear in "Probing Galaxies through Quasar Absorption Lines", Proceedings IAU Colloquium 199, 2005, Eds.
Scientific paper
10.1017/S1743921305002747
The damped Lyman-alpha (DLA) and sub-DLA quasar absorption lines provide powerful probes of the evolution of metals, gas, and stars in galaxies. One major obstacle in trying to understand the evolution of DLAs and sub-DLAs has been the small number of metallicity measurements at z < 1.5, an epoch spanning \~70 % of the cosmic history. In recent surveys with the Hubble Space Telescope and Multiple Mirror Telescope, we have doubled the DLA Zn sample at z < 1.5. Combining our results with those at higher redshifts from the literature, we find that the global mean metallicity of DLAs does not rise to the solar value at low redshifts. These surprising results appear to contradict the near-solar mean metallicity observed for nearby (z ~ 0) galaxies and the predictions of cosmic chemical evolution models based on the global star formation history. Finally, we discuss direct constraints on the star formation rates (SFRs) in the absorber galaxies from our deep Fabry-Perot Ly-alpha imaging study and other emission-line studies in the literature. A large fraction of the observed heavy-element quasar absorbers at 0 < z < 3.4 appear to have SFRs substantially below the global mean SFR, consistent with the low metallicities observed in the spectroscopic studies.
Fall Michael S.
Khare Pushpa
Kulkarni Varsha P.
Lauroesch James Thomas
Meiring Joseph
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