Zn and Cr Abundances in Damped Lyman Alpha Systems from the CORALS Survey

Abstract

We have recently completed the measurement of the abundances of the elements Zn and Cr in a small, but complete, sample of damped Lyman alpha systems selected irrespectively of their dust content (the CORALS radio sample). We find that at a mean redshift z = 2.4 their metallicity and degree of dust depletion are statistically indistinguishable from those of larger samples of DLAs assembled from optical surveys. Thus we conclude that reasons other than a dust-induced bias must be found to explain the lack of redshift evolution in the metallicity of the galaxies giving rise to DLAs, and their generally low degree of chemical enrichment compared with luminous galaxies observed at the same epoch.