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# A new measurement of zinc metallicity in a DLA at z ∼ 3.351

## 1 Introduction

The chemical abundances of the highest H I column density quasar absorbers ($`N(HI)>2\times 10^{20}`$ atoms cm-2), the Damped Lyman-$`\alpha `$ systems (DLAs), are commonly expressed using column density weighted measurements. They are used as observational tracers of the cosmological evolution of metallicities, up to very high redshifts (see for example Pettini et al. 1994, 1997; Lu et al. 1996; Prochaska & Wolfe 1999, 2000, 2001; Dessauges-Zavadsky et al. 2001; Ledoux, Bergeron & Petitjean 2002 and references therein). However, recent studies give somehow surprising results: Prochaska & Wolfe (2002) claim no evolution of the mean weighted iron metallicity over the redshift range $`1.73.5`$, in contradiction with predictions from essentially all chemical evolution models. A possible explanation for this result is that iron is not the optimal element for tracing metals on cosmological scales, because it is easily depleted onto dust grains. Dust depletion greatly complicates the interpretation of the metal content of DLAs. Nevertheless at very high-redshift ($`z>3.8`$), there are evidences that \[Fe/H\] is beginning to fall, in such a way that at $`z=5`$ the metallicity is substantially lower than at $`z<4`$ (Prochaska, Gawiser & Wolfe 2001, Songaila & Cowie 2002).

Pettini et al. (1994) estimated the dust content of DLAs with the help of a comprehensive survey of Zn measurements, an element which is known to be only slightly depleted onto dust grains, and thus provide an unbiased tracer of metallicities. However such measurements are challenging because of both the paucity and weakness of Zn features in quasar absorbers. At the moment, only two measurements of \[Zn/H\] have been made in DLAs at z$`>`$3 (Molaro et al. 2000, Levshakov et al. 2001). Here, we present a third detection of Zn in a DLA at z$``$3.35, thus providing clues on the dust-free abundance determination in high-redshift Damped Lyman-$`\alpha `$ systems. We first detail the observational set-ups and data reduction processes of the quasar spectrum. We then present the analysis and chemical abundance determination for a number of elements in the DLA studied, providing a short discussion on the consequences of these additional measurements at high-redshift.

## 2 Observation and Data Reduction

BR 1117$``$1329 is a high-redshift ($`z`$ $``$ 3.96) quasar exhibiting broad absorption lines (BAL) discovered by Storrie-Lombardi et al. (1996). The data presented in this study were obtained using the Ultraviolet-Visual Echelle Spectrograph (UVES) on the 8.2m VLT in April 2000 and April 2002. UVES is particularly well suited for the study of Zn at high-redshift thanks to its good sensitivity at the longer wavelengths. Three partially overlapping setups (480+710+725) were used to provide a complete coverage of the quasar spectrum ranging from $``$ 4195 Å to 9200 Å.

The individual spectra were reduced using the UVES data reduction pipeline of the ESO MIDAS package (see Ballester et al. 2000 for a detailed description). The steps of the data processing include wavelength calibration, order extraction and flat-fielding. Once extracted, the individual frames were corrected to a vacuum heliocentric scale and combined together resulting in a spectrum with signal-to-noise ratio of about 40 per pixel at $``$ 7000Å. The quasar continuum was then fitted to the quasar spectrum using a spline function.

A careful inspection of the spectrum bluewards of the Lyman-$`\alpha `$ emission reveals a DLA absorption in a region free of BAL features. The redshift ($`z_{abs}=3.35045`$) is well defined by the presence of higher Lyman series lines and heavy element absorption lines including some from Zn ii.

## 3 Analysis

### 3.1 Column Densities Measurements

The H i column density of this system is measured by fitting a theoretical Voigt profile to the Lyman series. The quasar continuum was fitted with a spline function in MIDAS. As always in DLAs at high-redshift, the positioning of the continuum over the strong absorption lines is the main source of uncertainties in the H i column density measurement. The use of several lines to perform the fit gives confidence in the result however. The fitting of the profile is performed with VPFIT 111VPFIT was written by R.F.Carswell, J.K. Webb, M.J. Irwin, A.J. Cooke. More information about VPFIT are available at following URL: http://www.ast.cam.ac.uk/$``$rfc/vpfit.html (Webb et al. 1987) and the resulting fit is presented in Figure 1 for the first three lines of the Lyman series. The total H i column density is $`N`$(H i) $`=6.92\pm 1.7\times 10^{20}`$ atoms cm-2.

We derive the column density of the ions associated with the DLA by fitting theoretical Voigt profiles to the observed features minimizing $`\chi ^2`$. For this purpose we make use of the FITLYMAN package in the MIDAS data reduction software. Only the lines free of telluric contamination and blending are used to determine the column densities of the elements. In particular, we took great care to check possible atmospheric contamination in the Cr ii $`\lambda `$ 2062 region (see Figure 2).

### 3.2 Results

The column densities obtained from the Voigt profile fits are used to derive abundances of Fe, Si, Ni, Zn, Cr and to place a lower limit on the abundance of Al and O and an upper limit on the abundance of N. All the low ionization species were fitted together with 3 components (see Table 2). We notice that all the lines can not be fitted with a single Doppler parameter. However a

a The good fit is achieved by assuming two different Doppler values respectively for Fe, Ni, Zn, Cr and Si, Al, O, N. The latter set of lines is broader than the other one. This difference is possibly due to the presence of extra components in these lines.
b Limits are 3-$`\sigma `$. c Using same b-parameter as in Si ii.

good fit is achieved by assuming two different values respectively for Fe, Ni, Zn, Cr and Si, Al, O, N. The latter set of lines are slightly broader than the other one. This difference is possibly due to the presence of extra components. It must be noted that this does not affect the column density determination as most of the species have at least one transition which is optically thin. An exception may be Si ii for which the weakest observed transition Si ii $`\lambda `$1808 is partially saturated (although not going to zero). Errors indicated in the tables are statistical errors in the fit. However, there are also systematic errors not accounted for here but which are smaller than the statistical errors.

The metal content with respect to solar values is expressed in the usual manner: $`[X/H]=\mathrm{log}[N(X)/N(H)]_{DLA}\mathrm{log}[N(X)/N(H)]_{}`$, assuming that $`N(X)=N(XII)`$ and $`N(H)=N(HI)`$, where the solar values are taken from Grevesse & Savage (1998) and Holweger (2001; see Table 4). Silicon abundance is derived from the slightly saturated (but not going to zero) Si ii $`\lambda `$ 1808 transition and the saturated Si ii $`\lambda `$ 1526 transition. This results in a \[Si/H\] value of $`1.26\pm 0.13`$. The error in the Si ii column density also includes the uncertainty in b’s determination. Similarly the iron abundance is obtained from the optically thin Fe ii $`\lambda `$ 1611 and saturated Fe ii $`\lambda `$ 1608 transitions. We derive $`[Fe/H]=1.51\pm 0.13`$. Two Ni ii lines (Ni ii $`\lambda \lambda `$ 1454, 1709) are available for abundance determination. We measure the column density: $`[Ni/H]=1.57\pm 0.13`$. The Cr ii lines are detected (Cr ii $`\lambda `$$`\lambda `$$`\lambda `$ 2056,2062,2066), but only one line is suitable for abundance determination (see Figure 2). The abundance derived from the Cr ii$`\lambda `$ 2062 is $`[Cr/H]=1.36\pm 0.13`$. After checking for possible atmospheric contaminations at these wavelengths, we find the Zn ii $`\lambda `$ 2026 line allows for the determination of the Zn content of this DLA. The new measurement of Zn at $`z_{abs}>3`$, $`[Zn/H]=1.18\pm 0.13`$, is higher than other measurements at these redshifts. The Al ii$`\lambda `$ 1670 line is heavily saturated and hence only a lower limit can be derived from this absorption feature: $`[Al/H]>1.25`$. Similarly, several O i lines are detected but all are saturated. Using O I $`\lambda `$ 971 and OI $`\lambda `$ 1039, we derive: $`[O/H]>1.25`$. Finally, the two red most triplets of N i are observed but are severely blended. Only one of the lines at our disposal is suitable to determine an upper limit to the N I abundance in this system: N I $`\lambda `$ 1200.2. We derive: $`[N/H]<2.24`$.

We also fit the high-ionization species in the DLA. The resulting column density estimates are summarized in Table 3 together with the redshift and Doppler parameters associated with each individual component. The C iv doublet (C iv$`\lambda `$$`\lambda `$1548,1550) is spread over $``$ 300 km s-1. It is well fitted by 5 components (Figure 4). We note that there is a velocity shift between the centroid of the low-ionization line profiles (Si ii $`\lambda `$ 1808, Fe ii $`\lambda `$ 1608, etc) and the one from the C iv doublet. This is illustrated in Figure 5 where the Fe ii$`\lambda `$1608 line profile is plotted together with the two members of the C iv doublet on the same velocity scale.

Finally, the Al iii doublet (Al iii$`\lambda `$$`\lambda `$1854,1862) is fitted with two components which have their positions and $`b`$-values fixed to those of Si ii. Indeed, the velocity structure of Al iii is known to follow closely the one from singly ionized species in DLAs (Lu et al. 1996, Prochaska & Wolfe 1999, Prochaska & Wolfe 2000). This observational fact is not straight forward to explain: the ionization potential of Al ii being greater than the one of hydrogen, Al iii is not expected to be present in the regions dominated by neutral hydrogen (i.e. DLA) although the atomic physics of aluminum species is not well known (see Petitjean et al. 1994). Several studies have tried to explain the observations (Howk & Sembach 1999, Izotov, Schaerer & Charbonnel 2001, Vladilo et al. 2001).

## 4 Discussion and Conclusion

In the DLA studied here, we observe a velocity shift between the low and the high ionization ionic features. The fact that the high-ionization profiles show much more disturbed velocity structure than the low-ionization profiles has already been noticed in the past (Lu et al. 1996; Ledoux et al. 1998). Haehnelt, Steinmetz & Rauch (1998) have suggested that such feature could be the signature of merging protogalactic clumps. Indeed they use numerical simulations to model the Si ii$`\lambda `$1808 and C iv$`\lambda `$1548 line profiles and note that the absorption features vary independently in the high ionization and low ionization species since the C iv absorption arises mainly from the warmer gas outside the self-shielding region of DLAs. Nevertheless, other numerical simulations fail to reproduce the DLA kinematics in a self-consistent manner (e.g. Prochaska & Wolfe 2001) and actually require that a significant fraction of DLAs have $`v_{circ}`$ 150 km s-1 (Maller et al. 2001) even within the Cold Dark Matter cosmology. In other words, if one wants to interpret the global kinematics of the whole DLA population with a simple model, the kinematics of the strongest systems might rule out a global dwarf galaxy scenario if one adopts $`v_{circ}<`$ 100 km s-1 as the dwarf criterion. Nevertheless, note that in the case of BR 1117$``$1329, the neutral component has a velocity width of about 50 km s-1 and that the strongest C iv components are seen on both side (at $``$50 and +130 km s-1) of the low-ionization profile. This is suggestive of a galactic wind from a dwarf galaxy.

The detection of N i in this DLA system allows us to probe the chemical history of the system. Indeed, the \[N/O\] ratio is useful to disentangle the contribution from the “primary” and “secondary” production processes for N enrichment. The limits obtained here suggests that \[N/O\]$`0.9`$ which is slightly lower than what one expects (i.e., $`0.6`$) if the primary process dominates (Vila-Costas & Edmunds, 1993). Like in most of the DLAs the \[O/N\] limits for the measured $`\alpha `$element metallicity is consistent with the delayed production of N compared to O and inconsistent with the primary production of N from the massive stars in the low metallicity gas (Lipman, Pettini & Hunstead, 1995; Lu et al. 1998; Centurión et al. 1998; Pettini et al. 2002 in press; Prochaska et al. in press).

The abundances of the DLA have been studied in detail. In this DLA, we find a zinc abundance slightly higher than the iron one: $`[Fe/Zn]=0.33\pm 0.05`$ which suggests that the amount of dust present in this absorber is rather low. This is further supported by the chromium over zinc ratio $`[Cr/Zn]=0.18\pm 0.05`$, another tracer of dust. Thus in this DLA the abundances of refractory elements (such as Fe and Cr) are in line with the one from the non-refractory element Zn. In addition, Al iii/Al ii is less than 5%. This means that the effect of ionization correction in the measurement of metallicity in this system is almost negligible (Vladilo et al. 2001) and the absolute abundances derived here do not suffer severe biases due to dust depletion.

We derive various $`\alpha `$-chain element to Fe-peak element ratios: $`[Si/Fe]=0.25\pm 0.06`$, $`[Si/Cr]=0.10\pm 0.06`$ and $`[Si/Zn]=0.08\pm 0.06`$. Thus the abundance pattern in this system is consistent with no $`\alpha `$enhancement with very little depletion in Fe and Cr with respect to Zn. The results indicate that the Type II SNe enrichment process does not dominate in this system, possibly because the Type I SNe enrichment process is already important. The fact that we observe the DLA when Type I SNe processes start to dominate over Type II SNe can not easily be interpreted since the turn-over depends on both the star formation rate and the initial mass function (Matteucci & Recchi 2001).

We derive a Zn abundance, $`[Zn/H]=1.18\pm 0.13`$ at $`z_{abs}=3.35`$, which is higher than the very few measurements available at these redshifts (corrected to the same solar value as use in the present study): Molaro et al. (2000) derives $`[Zn/H]=2.00\pm 0.1`$ in a DLA at $`z_{abs}=3.39`$ towards QSO 0000$``$2620 and Levshakov et al. (2002) find $`[Zn/H]=1.43\pm 0.08`$ in an absorber at $`z_{abs}=3.02`$ towards QSO 0347$``$3819 although the metallicity in this absorber is uncertain and could be larger (see Ledoux, Srianand & Petitjean 2002). The resulting column density weighted mean at $`z>3`$ is $`[<Zn/H_{DLA}>]=1.63`$, i.e. dominated by the highest HI column density, which here corresponds to the lowest Zn measurement from Molaro et al. (2000). For comparison, Pettini et al. (1997) find $`[<Zn/H_{DLA}>]=1.18`$ from $`z=0.69`$ to $`z=3.39`$ (where the measures at $`z>3`$ are upper limits). Although statistics are small, our result suggests an increase of metallicities from $`z>3`$ to present times. Previous compilations of Zn measurements at all redshifts have shown that the column density weighted metallicity does not evolve with time (Pettini et al. 1997, Vladilo et al. 2000, Prochaska & Wolfe 2002). These authors argue however that this cannot be directly interpreted as a lack of evolution of the cosmic metallicity of DLAs since measurements are still affected by low number statistics and possible bias against high column density, high metallicity absorbers (as first pointed out by Fall & Pei 1993 and Boissé et al. 1998). The presence of this bias is controversial at the moment (Ellison et al. 2001, Prochaska & Wolfe 2002, Petitjean et al. 2002) and many more measurements of undepleted metals in quasar absorbers are needed at $`z>3`$ before any conclusion can be drawn.

## 5 Acknowledgments

We are grateful to Cédric Ledoux for reducing the spectrum of BR 1117$``$1329 presented here and to an anonymous referee for providing very constructive comments. C. P. thanks Bob Carswell and Miriam Centurión for help with VPFIT and FITLYMAN respectively and Giovanni Vladilo and Paolo Molaro for comments on an earlier version of this manuscript. This work was supported in part by the European Communities RTN network ”The Physics of the Intergalactic Medium”. P.P.J. and R. S. gratefully acknowledge support from the Indo-French Centre for the Promotion of Advanced Research (Centre Franco-Indien pour la Promotion de la Recherche Avancée) under contract No. 1710-1.


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# Dynamical Evolution of Solids Subject to the Drag Force and the Self-Gravity of an Inhomogeneous and Marginally Gravitationally Unstable Disk

## 1. Introduction

It has recently been pointed out that a solar nebula massive enough to form gas-giant planets through the core-accretion model is likely gravitationally unstable (Pollack et al. 1996; Boss 2000; Inaba $`\&`$ Wetherill 2002). Such an unstable nebula is not entirely undesirable. The alternative model of the giant planets formation, namely, the disk instability mechanism, suggests rapid formation of gas-giant planets followed by sedimentation of small solids at the locations of spiral arms and clumps of a gravitationally unstable disk. It is, therefore, fundamentally important to study the dynamical evolution of solids in such an environment and in particular, the implications for the collisional coagulation and growth processes.

A turbulence-free rotating gaseous nebula is at hydrostatic equilibrium when the gravitational attraction of its central star is balanced by a radial gradient in its pressure known as the pressure gradient (Figure 1). When the pressure gradient is positive, the velocity of a gas molecule is greater than its local Keplerian velocity (Eq. (1)). A solid in the gas, in this case, feels, effectively, a larger acceleration along its orbit and, consequently, the increase in its orbital angular momentum forces the solid to a larger orbit. The opposite is true when the pressure gradient is negative.

$$r\omega _\mathrm{g}^2=r\omega _\mathrm{K}^2+\frac{1}{\rho _\mathrm{g}}\frac{dP_\mathrm{g}}{dr},\omega _\mathrm{K}^2=\frac{GM}{r^3}$$
(1)
In this equation, $`M`$ is the mass of the central star, $`G`$ is the gravitational constant and $`P_\mathrm{g},\rho _\mathrm{g}`$ and $`\omega _\mathrm{g}`$ represent the pressure, the density and the angular velocity of the gas, respectively.

In a rotating gravitationally unstable disk, gas density enhancements appear in the forms of spiral arms and clumps. It is possible for the pressure of the gas

to have a radial gradient in the vicinity of such density enhancements. In this case, solids migrate toward the location of the maximum gas density where the probabilities of their collisions and coagulations are enhanced. In this paper, we study the dynamics of solids that undergo such migrations while subject to gas drag and the gravitational attraction of the nebula.

## 2. The Model

To focus attention on the rates of the in/outward migrations of bodies and also their dependence on the solids and the nebula’s physical properties, an isothermal nebula of pure molecular hydrogen with a sun-like star at its center and with an azimuthally symmetric density given by Figure 2 is considered here. The small solid bodies are considered to be non-interacting and their motions are restricted to the midplane of the nebula. The gravitational force of the nebula is also taken into account (Haghighipour $`\&`$ Boss 2002, astro-ph/0207345). In such a nebula, $`\lambda `$(mean free path in cm)= $`4.72\times 10^9\rho _\mathrm{g}^1`$ g cm-3, $`\sigma `$(collisional cross section)= $`2\times 10^{15}`$ cm2 and the drag force of the gas is given by

$$𝐅_{\mathrm{drag}}=\frac{4}{3}\pi R_\mathrm{d}^2\rho _\mathrm{g}\left[(1f)\overline{v}_{\mathrm{th}}+\frac{3}{8}fC_\mathrm{D}v_{\mathrm{rel}}\right]𝐕_{\mathrm{rel}}.$$
(2)
In this equation, $`f=R_\mathrm{d}/(R_\mathrm{d}+\lambda )`$ (Supulver $`\&`$ Lin 2000) and $`R_\mathrm{d}`$ and $`\overline{v}_{\mathrm{th}}`$ represent the radius of the solid and the mean thermal velocity of the gas molecules, respectively. The quantity $`C_\mathrm{D}`$ in equation (2) is the drag coefficient and is approximately equal to $`24/R\mathrm{e}`$ for $`R\mathrm{e}<1,\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}24}/R\mathrm{e}^{0.6}`$ for $`1<R\mathrm{e}<800`$ and 0.44 for $`R\mathrm{e}>800`$ where $`R\mathrm{e}=6(\rho _\mathrm{g}R_\mathrm{d}\sigma /m_0)(v_{\mathrm{rel}}/\overline{v}_{\mathrm{th}})`$ is the gas Reynolds number and $`m_0`$ represents the molecular mass of the gas.

## 3. Numerical Analysis

The equations of motions of solids with sizes ranging from 1 micron to 1 km have been numerically integrated for different values of the solids densities and the gas temperature. Figure 3 shows the migration of solids with densities equal to 2 and 5 g cm-3 and radii of 10 and 100 cm. The temperature of the gas is constant at 1000 K. As shown here, solids with radii from 10 to 100 cm undergo rapid in/outward migrations toward the location of maximum density. The time of migration within a 1 AU neighborhood of $`r=1`$ (AU) is less then 1000 years, a time that is comparable with the time of giant planets formation as suggested by the disk instability model (Boss 2000).

The rate of migration is also affected by changing the densities of the solids. We studied the migration of solids for different values of the solids densities. The results indicate that for cm-sized objects, the rate of in/outward migrations increase with increasing the solids densities. For m-sized and larger objects, on the other hand, increasing the solids densities results in an increase in the rate of inward migration but a lower rate for migrating outward (Figure 3). For a detailed analytical analysis on this see Haghighipour $`\&`$ Boss (2002, astro-ph/0207345).

We also studied the effect of changing the temperature of the gas on the migration of solids. In general, increasing the temperature resulted in decreasing the rate of migration (Figure 4). We integrated the motions of solids with a variety of radii and densities for the gas temperature ranging from 25 K to 1000 K. Detailed analysis shows that an increase in the temperature of the gas will result in an increase in the mean thermal velocity of its molecules which in turn results in a decrease in the magnitude of the relative velocity of a solid. That means, the effect of the drag force in pushing a solid body in/outward weakens with increasing the gas temperature.

## 4. Conclusions

In general, the rate of the migration of a solid in a turbulence-free gaseous nebula in the presence of gas drag and the gravitational force of the nebula varies with the solid’s mass and size and also with the gas density and temperature. The results of this study indicate that it is, indeed, possible for solids within certain ranges of size and density to migrate rapidly to the locations of the maximum values of the gas density. Given the likelihood that the solar nebula was marginally-gravitationally unstable, the processes studied here may have enhanced the growth rates of solid planetesimals.

This work is partially supported by the NASA Origin of the Solar System Program under grant NAG5-10547 and by the NASA Astrobiology Institute under the grant NCC2-1056.

Figure 4. Radial migration of a 10 cm-sized object with a density of

2 g cm-3 for four different values of the gas temperature.

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Pollack, J. B., Hubickyj, O., Bodenheimer, P., Lissauer, J. J., Podolak, M., $`\&`$ Greenzweig, Y. 1996, Icarus, 124, 62

Supulver, K. D., $`\&`$ Lin, D. N. C. 2000, Icarus, 146, 525

Whipple, F. L. 1972, in From Plasma to Planets ed. A. Elvius (Wiley, London)