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Cosmic Metal Evolution During The First ∼1 Billion Years After The Big Bang Using Damped/Sub-Damped Lyman-Alpha Absorbers, Suraj Poudel

Theses and Dissertations

Metal abundance measurements throughout the cosmic ages track the history of galaxy formation and evolution. Measuring abundances during the first ∼1 billion years is especially important, as they are influenced by the nucleosynthetic signatures from the early stars. Evolution of metallicity of Damped/sub-Damped Lyman-alpha Absorbers (DLAs/sub-DLAs) detected in the spectra of quasars is a powerful tracer of the cosmic star formation history. A sudden drop in DLA metallicity at z>4.7 was reported in some recent studies. However, these studies were primarily based on refractory elements such as Fe and Si. We present ten new abundance measurements of the elements …