* Astronomy

Title: Near-pristine gas at high redshifts: a window on early nucleosynthesis
Authors: Max Pettini (Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge), Ryan Cooke (Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge and Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of California, Santa Cruz)

It has now become recognised that damped Lyman alpha systems play an important role in helping us unravel the origin of chemical elements. In this presentation, we describe the main results of a recently completed survey of the most metal-poor DLAs, aimed at complementing and extending studies of the oldest stars in the Galaxy. The survey has clarified a number of lingering issues concerning the abundances of C, N, O in the low metallicity regime, has revealed the existence of DLA analogues to Carbon-enhanced metal-poor stars, and is providing some of the most precise measures of the primordial abundance of Deuterium.

Read more (2569kb, PDF)