Star formation and chemical evolution of damped Lyman α systems

In this paper, we investigate the star formation and chemical evolution of damped Lyman LY systems (DLAs) based on the disc galaxy formation model developed by Mo, Mao & White. We propose that the DLAs are the central galaxies of less-massive dark haloes present at redshifts z similar to 3, and they should inhabit haloes of moderately low circular velocity. The empirical Schmidt law of star formation rates, and closed box model of chemical evolution that an approximation known as instantaneous recycling is assumed, are adopted. In our models, when the predicted distribution of metallicity for DLAs is calculated, two cases are considered. One is that, using the closed-box model, empirical Schmidt law and star formation time, the distribution of metallicity can be directly calculated. The other is that, when the simple gravitational instability of a thin isothermal gas disc as first discussed by Toomre is considered, the star formation occurs only in the region where the surface density of gas satisfies the critical value, not everywhere of a gas disc. In this case, we first obtain the region where the star formation can occur by assuming that the disc has a flat rotation curve and rotational velocity is equal to the circular velocity of the surrounding dark matter halo, and then calculate the metallicity distribution as in case one. We assume that star formation in each DLA lasts for a period of 1 Gyr from redshifts z = 3. There is only one output parameter in our models, i.e, the stellar yield, which relates to the time of star formation history and is obtained by normalizing the predicted distribution of metallicity to the mean value of 1/13 Z. as presented by Pettini et al.. The predicted metallicity distribution is consistent with the current (rather limited) observational data. A random distribution of galactic discs is taken into account.