Comprehensive Abundance Measurements in Damped Lyα Systems

The high quality, high-resolution UVES/VLT and HIRES/Keck spectra of 10 quasars allowed us to analyze in detail 11 intervening damped Lyα systems at z abs = 1.7 – 2.5. We detected 54 metal-line transitions and obtained the column density measurements of 30 ions from 22 elements, B, C, N, O, Mg, Al, Si, P, S, Cl, Ar, Ti, Cr, Mn, Fe, Co, Ni, Cu, Zn, Ge, As, and Kr. Thanks to these comprehensive elemental abundances, we could for the first time study in detail the abundance patterns of a wide range of elements, the chemical variations of the ISM clouds, the star formation history, and the age of these high-redshift galaxies.