Sub-damped Lyman α systems in the XQ-100 survey – II. Chemical evolution at 2.4 ≤ z ≤ 4.3

We present the measured gas-phase metal column densities in 155 sub-damped Ly α systems (subDLAs) with the aim to investigate the contribution of subDLAs to the chemical evolution of the Universe. The sample was identified within the absorber-blind XQ-100 quasar spectroscopic survey over the redshift range 2.4 ≤ zabs ≤ 4.3. Using all available column densities of the ionic species investigated (mainly C IV, Si II, Mg II, Si IV, Al II, Fe II, C II, and O I; in order of decreasing detection frequency), we estimate the ionization-corrected gas-phase metallicity of each system using Markov chain Monte Carlo techniques to explore a large grid of CLOUDY ionization models. Without accounting for ionization and dust depletion effects, we find that the H I-weighted gas-phase metallicity evolution of subDLAs is consistent with damped Ly α systems (DLAs). When ionization corrections are included, subDLAs are systematically more metal poor than DLAs (between ≈0.5σ and ≈3σ significance) by up to ≈1.0 dex over the redshift range 3 ≤ zabs ≤ 4.3. The correlation of gas phase [Si/Fe] with metallicity in subDLAs appears to be consistent with that of DLAs, suggesting that the two classes of absorbers have a similar relative dust depletion pattern. As previously seen for Lyman limit systems, the gas phase [C/O] in subDLAs remains constantly solar for all metallicities indicating that both subDLAs and Lyman limit systems could trace carbon-rich ejecta, potentially in circumgalactic environments. © 2021 The Author(s).
We are grateful to Ryan Cooke for providing unpublished abundance measurements to compute the ICs for the metal-poor DLAs. This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No 757535). This work has been supported by Fondazione Cariplo, grant No 2018-2329. SL was funded by FONDECYT grant number 1191232.
With funding from the Spanish government through the Severo Ochoa Centre of Excellence accreditation SEV-2017-0709.