Clues to the nucleosynthetic pattern and dust depletion in damped lyman α systems Original Research Article

In this paper, we present some statistical results of the various cross correlations among observed element abundances (both absolute values and ratios), neutral hydrogen column density and metal column density. Specifically, we point out the anti-correlations between the observed abundance ratios and metal column density in DLAs, namely, [X/Zn] and/or [X/Si] (where X stands for the refractories Fe, Cr and Ni) with [Zn/H]+log(NHI) and [Si/H]+log(NHI). We suggest that those identified anti-correlations could provide important clues to the dust depletion and nucleosynthetic patterns in DLAs.