Are Damped Ly-alpha Systems Large, Galactic Disks ?

Abstract

The hypothesis that the Damped Ly-alpha systems (DLAs) are large, galactic disks (Milky Way sized) is tested by confronting predictions of models of the formation and evolution of (large) disk galaxies with observations, in particular the Zinc abundance distribution with neutral hydrogen column density found for DLAs. A pronounced mismatch is found strongly hinting that the majority of DLAs may not be large, galactic disks.

8 pages incl. 5 figures (Kluwer Proceedings format). Contribution to the Euroconference "The Evolution of Galaxies on Cosmological Timescales", Tenerife, 30 Nov. - 5 Dec. 1998

References in corpus (5)

• The Formation of Galactic Disks
• On the Kinematics of the Damped Lyman Alpha Protogalaxies
• Damped Lyman alpha absorbers at high redshift -- large disks or galactic building blocks?
• The Metallicity of High Redshift Galaxies: The Abundance of Zinc in 34 Damped Lyman Alpha Systems from z = 0.7 to 3.4
• Protogalactic Disk Models of Damped Lya Kinematics