The {\alpha}-element enrichment of gas in distant galaxies

The chemical evolution of distant galaxies cannot be assessed from observations of individual stars, in contrast to the case of nearby galaxies. On the other hand, the study of the interstellar medium (ISM) offers an alternative way to reveal important properties of the chemical evolution of distant galaxies. The chemical enrichment of the ISM is produced by all the previous generations of stars and it is possible to precisely determine the metal abundances in the neutral ISM in galaxies. The chemical abundance patterns in the neutral ISM are determined by the gas metallicity, presence of dust (the depletion of metals into dust grains), and possible deviations due to specific nucleosynthesis, for example, $\alpha$-element enhancements. We aim to derive the metallicities, dust depletion, and $\alpha$-element enhancements in the neutral ISM of gas-rich mostly-metal-poor distant galaxies (Damped Lyman-$\alpha$ absorbers, DLAs). Furthermore, we aim to constrain the distribution of $\alpha$-element enhancements with metallicity in these galaxies. We have constrained, for the first time, the distribution of the $\alpha$-element enhancement with metallicity in the neutral ISM in distant galaxies. Less massive galaxies show an $\alpha$-element knee at lower metallicities than more massive galaxies. This can be explained by a lower star formation rate in less massive galaxies. If this collective behaviour can be interpreted in the same way as it is for individual systems, this would suggest that more massive and metal-rich systems evolve to higher metallicities before the contribution of SN-Ia to [$\alpha$/Fe] levels out that of core-collapse SNe. This finding may plausibly be supported by different SFRs in galaxies of different masses. Overall, our results offer important clues to the study of chemical evolution in distant galaxies.Comment: 22 pages, 20 figures. Submitted to A&

Dust depletion of of metals from local to distant galaxies II: Cosmic dust-to-metal ratio and dust composition

The evolution of the cosmic dust content and the cycle between metals and dust in the interstellar medium (ISM) play a fundamental role in galaxy evolution. The chemical enrichment of the Universe can be traced through the evolution of the dust-to-metals ratio (DTM) and the dust-to-gas ratio (DTG) with metallicity. We use a novel method to determine mass estimates of the DTM, DTG and dust composition based on our previous measurements of the depletion of metals in different environments (the Milky Way, the Magellanic Clouds, and damped Lyman-$\alpha$ absorbers, DLAs, toward quasars and towards gamma-ray bursts, GRBs), which were calculated from the relative abundances of metals in the ISM through absorption-line spectroscopy column densities observed mainly from VLT/UVES and X-shooter, and HST/STIS. We derive the dust extinction from the estimated dust depletion ($A_{V, \rm depl}$) and compare with the $A_{V}$ from extinction. We find that the DTM and DTG ratios increase with metallicity and with the dust tracer [Zn/Fe]. This suggests that grain growth in the ISM is a dominant process of dust production. The increasing trend of the DTM and DTG with metallicity is in good agreement with a dust production and evolution model. Our data suggest that the stellar dust yield is much lower than the metal yield and thus that the overall amount of dust in the warm neutral medium that is produced by stars is much lower. We find that $A_{V,\rm depl}$ is overall lower than $A_{V, \rm ext}$ for the Milky Way and a few Magellanic Clouds lines of sight, a discrepancy that is likely related to the presence of carbonaceous dust. We show that the main elements that contribute to the dust composition are, O, Fe, Si, Mg, C, S, Ni and Al for all the environments. Abundances at low dust regimes suggest the presence of pyroxene and metallic iron in dust.Comment: Accepted for publication in A&A. Abstract abridge

Author Correction: Large metallicity variations in the Galactic interstellar medium

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Large Metallicity Variations in the Galactic Interstellar Medium

The Interstellar Medium (ISM) comprises gases at different temperatures and densities, including ionized, atomic, molecular species, and dust particles. The neutral ISM is dominated by neutral hydrogen and has ionization fractions up to 8%. The concentration of chemical elements heavier than helium (metallicity) spans orders of magnitudes in Galactic stars, because they formed at different times. Instead, the gas in the Solar vicinity is assumed to be well mixed and have Solar metallicity in traditional chemical evolution models. The ISM chemical abundances can be accurately measured with UV absorption-line spectroscopy. However, the effects of dust depletion, which removes part of the metals from the observable gaseous phase and incorporates it into solid grains, have prevented, until recently, a deeper investigation of the ISM metallicity. Here we report the dust-corrected metallicity of the neutral ISM measured towards 25 stars in our Galaxy. We find large variations in metallicity over a factor of 10 (with an average 55 +/- 7% Solar and standard deviation 0.28 dex) and including many regions of low metallicity, down to ~17% Solar and possibly below. Pristine gas falling onto the disk in the form of high-velocity clouds can cause the observed chemical inhomogeneities on scales of tens of pc. Our results suggest that this low-metallicity accreting gas does not efficiently mix into the ISM, which may help us understand metallicity deviations in nearby coeval stars.Comment: This version of the article has been accepted for publication on Nature, after peer review, but is not the Version of Record (http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-03780-0) and does not reflect post-acceptance improvements, or any corrections. An Addendum is included at the end of the article and is published here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-04811-

Addendum: Large metallicity variations in the Galactic interstellar medium

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α-element enhancements in the ISM of the LMC and SMC:Evidence of recent star formation

Context. Important questions regarding the chemical composition of the neutral interstellar medium (ISM) in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) and Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) are still open. It is usually assumed that their metallicity is uniform and equal to that measured in hot stars and H II regions, but direct measurements of the neutral ISM metallicity had not been performed until now. Deriving the metallicity from the observed metal abundances is not straightforward because the abundances depend on the depletion of metals into dust and on nucleosynthesis effects such as α-element enhancement. Aims. Our aim is to measure the metallicity of the neutral ISM in the LMC and SMC, dust depletion, and any nucleosynthesis effects. Methods. We collected literature column densities of Ti II, Ni II, Cr II, Fe II, Mn II, Si II, Cu II, Mg II, S II, P II, Zn II, and O I in the neutral ISM towards 32 hot stars in the LMC and 22 in the SMC. We determined dust depletion from the relative abundances of different metals because they deplete with different strengths. This includes a 'golden sample' of sightlines where Ti and other α-elements are available. We fit linear relations to the observed abundance patterns so that the slopes determined the strengths of dust depletion and the normalizations determined the metallicities. We investigated α-element enhancements in the gas from the deviations from the linear fits and compared them with stars. Results. In our golden sample we find α-element enhancement in the neutral ISM in most systems, on average 0.26 dex (0.35 dex) for the LMC (SMC), and an Mn underabundance in the SMC (on average-0.35 dex). Measurements of Mn II are not available for the LMC. These are higher than for stars at similar metallicities. We find total neutral ISM metallicities that are mostly consistent with hot star metallicity values, on average [M/H]tot =-0.33 (-0.83), with standard deviations of 0.30 (0.30), in the LMC (the SMC). In six systems, however, we find significantly lower metallicities, 2 out of 32 in the LMC (with ~16% solar) and 4 out of 22 in the SMC (3 and 10% solar), two of which are in the outskirts of the SMC near the Magellanic Bridge, a region known for having a lower metallicity. Conclusions. The observed a-element enhancements and Mn underabundance are likely due to bursts of star formation, more recently than ~1 Gyr ago, that enriched the ISM from core-collapse supernovae. With the exception of lines of sight towards the Magellanic Bridge, the neutral gas in the LMC and SMC appears fairly well mixed in terms of metallicity.</p

Dust depletion of metals from local to distant galaxies. I. Peculiar nucleosynthesis effects and grain growth in the ISM

International audienceLarge fractions of metals are missing from the observable gas-phase in the interstellar medium (ISM) because they are incorporated into dust grains. This phenomenon is called dust depletion. It is important to study the depletion of metals into dust grains in the ISM to investigate the origin and evolution of metals and cosmic dust. We characterize the dust depletion of several metals from the Milky Way to distant galaxies. We collected measurements of ISM metal column densities from absorption-line spectroscopy in the literature, and in addition, we determined Ti and Ni column densities from a sample of 70 damped Lyman-α absorbers (DLAs) toward quasars that were observed at high spectral resolution with the Very Large Telescope (VLT) Ultraviolet and Visual Echelle Spectrograph (UVES). We used relative ISM abundances to estimate the dust depletion of 18 metals (C, P, O, Cl, Kr, S, Ge, Mg, Si, Cu, Co, Mn, Cr, Ni, Al, Ti, Zn, and Fe) for different environments (the Milky Way, the Magellanic Clouds, and DLAs toward quasars and towards gamma-ray bursts). We observed overall linear relations between the depletion of each metal and the overall strength of the dust depletion, which we traced with the observed [Zn/Fe]. The slope of these dust depletion sequences correlates with the condensation temperature of the various elements, that is, the more refractory elements show steeper depletion sequences. In the neutral ISM of the Magellanic Clouds, small deviations from linearity are observed as an overabundance of the α-elements Ti, Mg, S, and an underabundance of Mn, including for metal-rich systems. The Ti, Mg, and Mn deviations completely disappear when we assume that all systems in our sample of OB stars observed toward the Magellanic Clouds have an α-element enhancement and Mn underabundance, regardless of their metallicity. This may imply that the Magellanic Clouds have recently been enriched in α-elements, potentially through recent bursts of star formation. We also observe an S overabundance in all local galaxies, which is an effect of ionization due to the contribution of their H II regions to the measured S II column densities. The observed strong correlations of the depletion sequences of the metals all the way from low-metallicity quasi-stellar object DLAs to the Milky Way suggest that cosmic dust has a common origin, regardless of the star formation history, which, in contrast, varies significantly between these different galaxies. This supports the importance of grain growth in the ISM as a significant process of dust production

Dust depletion of metals from local to distant galaxies. II. Cosmic dust-to-metal ratio and dust composition

International audienceThe evolution of cosmic dust content and the cycle between metals and dust in the interstellar medium (ISM) play a fundamental role in galaxy evolution. The chemical enrichment of the Universe can be traced through the evolution of the dust-to-metal ratio (DTM) and the dust-to-gas ratio (DTG) with metallicity. The physical processes through which dust is created and eventually destroyed remain to be elucidated. We use a novel method to determine mass estimates of the DTM, DTG, and dust composition in terms of the fraction of dust mass contributed by element X (fMX) based on our previous measurements of the depletion of metals in different environments (the Milky Way, the Magellanic Clouds, and damped Lyman-α absorbers (DLAs) towards quasars (QSOs) and towards gamma-ray bursts (GRBs)), which were calculated from the relative abundances of metals in the ISM through absorption-line spectroscopy column densities observed mainly from VLT/UVES and X-shooter, and HST/STIS. We also derive the dust extinction from the estimated dust depletion (AV,depl) for GRB-DLAs, the Magellanic Clouds, and the Milky Way, and compare it with the AV estimated from extinction (AV,ext). We find that the DTM and DTG ratios increase with metallicity and with the dust tracer [Zn/Fe]. This suggests that grain growth in the ISM is the dominant process of dust production, at least in the metallicity range (−2 ≤ [M/H]tot ≤ 0.5) and redshift range (0.6 V,depl is lower than AV,ext for the Milky Way and in a few lines of sight for the Magellanic Clouds, a discrepancy that is likely related to the presence of carbonaceous dust associated with dense clumps of cold neutral gas. For the other environments studied here, we find good agreement overall between the AV,ext and AV,depl. We show that the main elements (fMX > 1%) that contribute to the dust composition, by mass, are O, Fe, Si, Mg, C, S, Ni, and Al for all the environments, with Si, Mg, and C being equivalent contributors. There are nevertheless variations in the dust composition depending on the overall amount of dust. The abundances measured at low dust regimes in quasar- and GRB-DLAs suggest the presence of pyroxene and metallic iron in dust. These results give important information on the dust and metal content of galaxies across cosmic times, from the Milky Way up to z = 6.3