• DOI:10.1093/mnras/stab2837
• Corpus ID: 237513762

Cosmic metal density evolution in neutral gas: insights from observations and cosmological simulations

@article{Yates2021CosmicMD,
  title={Cosmic metal density evolution in neutral gas: insights from observations and cosmological simulations},
  author={Robert M Yates and C{\'e}line P{\'e}roux and Dylan Nelson},
  journal={Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society},
  year={2021}
}

• R. Yates, C. Péroux, D. Nelson
• Published 14 September 2021
• Physics
• Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

We contrast the latest observations of the cosmic metal density in neutral gas ($\rho _{\rm {met,neu}}$) with three cosmological galaxy evolution simulations: L-Galaxies 2020, TNG100, and EAGLE. We find that the fraction of total metals that are in neutral gas is <40 per cent at 3 ≲ z ≲ 5 in these simulations, whereas observations of damped Lyman-α (DLA) systems suggest ≳ 85 per cent. In all three simulations, hot, low-density gas is also a major contributor to the cosmic metal budget, even…