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We present a model of chemical evolution in disc galaxies, which extends our semi-analytic model for galaxy evolution. This semi-analytic framework has already been shown to reproduce the observed star formation histories. We take an open box approach which tracks the metallicity of two phases, the hot coronal gas and the cold gas making up the disc. Gaseous infall at primordial metallicities is constrained by analytic fits to N-body simulations and the model includes supernova and active galactic nuclei feedback.We address the differences between observedmetallicities obtained from H II data and fromdamped Lyman alpha absorbers and show that they may be explained by observational selection effects resulting from radial metallicity gradients, without having to resort to a separate population of galaxies. Within the framework describing these selection effects the cold disc gas of our chemical evolution model is shown to reproduce the metallicities of both the H II regions and the damped Lyman alpha absorbers. DLA metallicities are shown to be largely determined by dwarf galaxies especially at high redshifts.

Item Type:	Refereed Article
Keywords:	galaxies, chemical evolution, DLA
Research Division:	Physical Sciences
Research Group:	Astronomical sciences
Research Field:	Astronomical sciences not elsewhere classified
Objective Division:	Expanding Knowledge
Objective Group:	Expanding knowledge
Objective Field:	Expanding knowledge in the physical sciences
UTAS Author:	Shabala, SS (Associate Professor Stas Shabala)
ID Code:	72585
Year Published:	2011
Web of Science® Times Cited:	3
Deposited By:	Mathematics and Physics
Deposited On:	2011-08-29
Last Modified:	2017-11-03
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