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Galaxies In Absorption: A Study Of Chemical And Kinematic Properties Of Sub-Damped Lyman-Alpha Quasar Absorbers, Debopam Som

Theses and Dissertations

Study of the chemical composition of the interstellar medium (ISM) in galaxies over cosmic time is essential for a coherent understanding of galaxy formation and evolu- tion. Absorption lines in the spectra of quasars can be used as powerful, luminosity- independent probes of the properties of gas in and around galaxies and have been used extensively to study galaxies, the circumgalactic medium (CGM) and the intergalac- tic medium (IGM). The Damped Lyman-α systems (DLAs), with neutral hydrogen column densities of log NHI & 20.3, and sub-Damped Lyman-α systems (sub-DLAs) with 19.0 . log NHI < 20.3 are the highest NHI quasar absorbers and contain the most of the neutral gas available for star formation in the high-redshift Universe. These systems are believed to trace the progenitors of present-day galaxies and ac- curately probe chemical abundances in the ISM over ∼ 90% of the cosmic history. In contradiction with the cosmic chemical evolution models which predict the mean metallicity of galaxies to rise from low metallicities at high-z to a near-solar level at z ∼ 0, the DLAs are typically found to be metal-poor at all redshifts, showing little or no evolution. Interestingly, past work showed that the sub-DLAs at 0.6 . z . 1.5 are more metal-rich on average than DLAs, and evolve consistently with the chemical evolution models in this redshift range. This suggests that the DLAs and sub-DLAs may be tracing the progenitors of different populations of present-day galaxies. How- ever, chemical evolution of sub-DLAs is poorly constrained outside of the redshift range 0.6 < z < 1.5 which hinders a better understanding of galaxy evolution traced by DLAs and sub-DLAs.

This dissertation presents chemical abundance measurements …