Chemical Abundances in Star-Forming Galaxies at High Redshift

Abstract

A galaxy's metallicity provides a record of star formation, gas accretion, and gas outflow, and is therefore one of the most informative measurements that can be made at high redshift. It is also one of the most difficult. I review methods of determining chemical abundances in distant star-forming galaxies, and summarize results for galaxies at 1<z<3. I then focus on the mass-metallicity relation, its evolution with redshift, and its uses in constraining inflows and outflows of gas, and conclude with a brief discussion of future prospects for metallicity measurements at high redshift.

Invited review to appear in "Chemical Abundances in the Universe: Connecting First Stars to Planets", Proceedings of IAU Symposium 265, Rio de Janeiro 2009, K. Cunha, M. Spite, B. Barbuy, eds

References in corpus (10)

• The Mass-Metallicity Relation at z~2
• The Stellar, Gas and Dynamical Masses of Star-Forming Galaxies at z~2
• The impact of the nitrogen-to-oxygen ratio on ionized nebulae diagnostics based on [NII] emission lines
• The Metallicity of Galaxy Disks: Infall versus Outflow
• Metallicities and Physical Conditions in Star-forming Galaxies at z~1.0-1.5
• A Model for Star Formation, Gas Flows and Chemical Evolution in Galaxies at High Redshifts
• The Ultraviolet Spectrum of the Gravitationally Lensed Galaxy `The Cosmic Horseshoe': A Close-up of a Star-forming Galaxy at z = 2
• The Varied Fates of z~2 Star-forming Galaxies
• First direct metallicity measurement of a lensed star-forming galaxy at z=1.7
• Physical properties of galaxies and their evolution in the VIMOS VLT Deep Survey. II. Extending the mass-metallicity relation to the range z=0.89-1.24