The First Galaxies: Clues from Element Abundances

Abstract

It has recently become possible to measure directly the abundances of several chemical elements in a variety of environments at redshifts up to z = 5. In this review I summarise the latest observations of Lyman break galaxies, damped Lyman alpha systems and the Lyman alpha forest with a view to uncovering any clues which these data may offer to the first episodes of star formation. The picture which is emerging is one where the universe at z = 3 already included many of the components of today's galaxies--even at these early times we see evidence for Populations I and II stars, while the `smoking gun' for Population III objects may be hidden in the chemical composition of the lowest density regions of the IGM, yet to be deciphered.

15 pages, LaTex, 8 Postscript Figures. To appear in the Philosophical Transactions of The Royal Society, Series A

References in corpus (5)

• The Ultraviolet Spectrum of MS 1512-cB58: An Insight into Lyman Break Galaxies
• The Rest-Frame Optical Spectrum of MS 1512-cB58
• Si and Mn Abundances in Damped Lya Systems with Low Dust Content
• Metallicity Evolution in the Early Universe
• HII Galaxies as deep cosmological probes

Cited by in corpus (7)

• The Rest Frame Optical Spectra of Lyman Break Galaxies: Star Formation, Extinction, Abundances, and Kinematics
• The Stellar Populations and Evolution of Lyman Break Galaxies
• Zinc abundances in Galactic bulge field red giants: implications for DLA systems
• UVES observations of a damped Ly-alpha system at z_abs = 4.466 towards the quasar APM BR J0307-4945
• Constrained semi-analytical models of Galactic outflows
• Clues to the nature of damped Lyman alpha systems from chemical evolution models
• The Host Haloes of Lyman Break Galaxies and Sub-millimeter Sources