H2-Bearing Damped Lyman-α Systems as Tracers of Cosmological Chemical Evolution

Abstract

The chemical abundances in damped Lyman-α 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 chemical evolution. We explore the possibility that DLAs in which H2 absorption is detected may trace cosmological chemical evolution more reliably since they may comprise a narrower set of physical conditions. The 9 known H2 absorption systems support this hypothesis: metallicity exhibits a faster, more well-defined evolution with redshift than in the general DLA population. The dust-depletion factor and, particularly, H2 molecular fraction also show rapid increases with decreasing redshift. We comment on possible observational selection effects which may bias this evolution. Larger samples of H2-bearing DLAs are clearly required and may constrain evolution of the UV background and DLA galaxy host type with redshift.