Thanks to the remarkable ALMA capabilities and the unique configuration of the Cosmic Snake galaxy behind a massive galaxy cluster, we could resolve molecular clouds down to 30 pc linear physical scales in a typical Milky Way progenitor at z = 1.036, through CO(4–3) observations performed at the ∼ 0.2″ angular resolution. We identified 17 individual giant molecular clouds. These high-redshift molecular clouds are clearly different from their local analogues, with 10–100 times higher masses, densities, and internal turbulence. They are offset from the Larson scaling relations. We argue that the molecular cloud physical properties are dependent on the ambient interstellar conditions particular to the host galaxy. We find these high-redshift clouds in virial equilibrium, and derive, for the first time, the CO-to-H2 conversion factor from the kinematics of independent molecular clouds at z = 1. The measured large clouds gas masses demonstrate the existence of parent gas clouds with masses high enough to allow the in-situ formation of similarly massive stellar clumps seen in the Cosmic Snake galaxy in comparable numbers. Our results support the formation of molecular clouds by fragmentation of turbulent galactic gas disks, which then become the stellar clumps observed in distant galaxies.

High-resolution imaging reveals clumpy morphologies among z = 1 – 3 galaxies. Most of these galaxies are dominated by disk rotation, which led to conclude that the observed clumps are generated from disk fragmentation due to gravitational instability. Despite the kpc-scale resolution attained by the most advanced facilities and numerical simulations, these clumps are barely resolved at z > 1. Thanks to the stretching and magnification power provided by gravitational lensing, we reach the sub-kpc resolving power to unveil their physics. From our literature compilation of data, we show that without lensing there is a bias toward clumps with high masses and sizes. The high-redshift clumps identified in lensed galaxies have stellar masses 2 orders of magnitude lower and a median size of 250 pc. They resemble local star clusters observed in the most intensively star-forming galaxies. The clump masses and sizes observed in lensed galaxies agree with new simulations, which show that the Toomre instability criterion overestimates the clump masses by a factor of 5 – 6.

Recent CO surveys of star-forming galaxies (SFGs) at z ~ 2 have revolutionized our picture of massive galaxies. It is time to expand these studies toward the more common z ~ 2 SFGs with SFR < 40 M⊙ yr−1 and M* < 2.5 × 1010 M⊙. We have derived molecular gas, stars, and dust in 8 such lensed SFGs. They extend the LIR–L'CO(1-0) distribution of massive z>1 SFGs and increase the spread of the SFG star formation efficiency (SFE). A single star formation relation is found when combining all existing CO-detected galaxies. Our low-M* SFGs also reveal a SFE decrease with M* as found locally. A rise of the molecular gas fraction (fgas) with redshift is observed up to z ~ 1.6, but it severely flattens toward higher redshifts. We provide the first insight into the fgas upturn at the low-M* end 109.4 < M*/M⊙ < 1010 reaching fgas ~ 0.7, it is followed by a fgas decrease toward higher M*. Finally, we find a non-universal dust-to-gas ratio among local and high-redshift SFGs and starbursts with near-solar metallicities.

Current star-forming galaxies (SFGs) with CO measurements at z ~ 2 suffer from a bias toward high star formation rates (SFR) and high stellar masses (M*). It is yet essential to extend the CO measurements to the more numerous z ~ 2 SFGs with LIR < L⋆ = 4× 1011 L⊙ and M* < 2.5× 1010 M⊙. We have achieved CO, stars, and dust measurements in 8 such sub-L⋆ SFGs with the help of gravitational lensing. Combined with CO-detected galaxies from the literature, we find that the LIR, L′CO(1−0) data are best-fitted with a single relation that favours a universal star formation. This picture emerges because of the enlarged star formation efficiency spread of the current z>1 SFGs sample. We show that this spread is mostly triggered by the combination of redshift, specific SFR, and M*. Finally, we find evidence for a non-universal dust-to-gas ratio (DGR) with a clear trend for a lower DGR mean in z>1 SFGs by a factor of 2 with respect to local galaxies and high-redshift sub-mm galaxies at fixed about solar metallicity.

To extend the molecular gas measurements to typical L* star-forming galaxies (SFGs) at z ∼ 1.5 − 3, we have observed CO emission for five strongly-lensed galaxies selected from the Herschel Lensing Survey. The combined sample of our L* SFGs with CO-detected SFGs at z >1 from the literature shows a large spread in star formation efficiency (SFE). We find that this spread in SFE is due to variations of several physical parameters, primarily the specific star formation rate, but also stellar mass and redshift. An increase of the molecular gas fraction (fgas) is observed from z ∼ 0.2 to z ∼ 1.2, followed by a quasi non-evolution toward higher redshifts, as found in earlier studies. We provide the first measure of fgas of z >1 SFGs at the low-stellar mass end between 109.4 < M∗/M⊙ < 109.9, which shows a clear fgas upturn.

We review the current state of knowledge of damped Lyα systems (DLAs) selected in absorption on quasar sightlines. These objects are extremely useful to study the interstellar medium of high-redshift galaxies and the nucleosynthesis in the early Universe. The characteristics of this galaxy population has been investigated for years and slowly we are getting information on their puzzling nature. Imaging at z <1 shows that DLAs are associated with a mixing bag of galaxies with no especially large contribution from dwarf galaxies. Evidence for a mild evolution of the cosmic mean metallicity with time is observed. The star formation histories of these high-redshift galaxies begin to be accessible and indicate that DLAs tend to be young, gas-dominated galaxies with low star formation rates per unit area. Finally, indirect estimation of the DLA stellar masses from the mass-metallicity relations observed for emission-selected star-forming galaxies at z = 2−3 points to intermediate-mass galaxies with M* < 109M⊙.

We test the hypothesis that the host galaxies of long-duration gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) as well as quasar-selected damped Lyman-α (DLA) systems are drawn from the population of UV-selected star-forming, high z galaxies (generally referred to as Lyman-break galaxies). Specifically, we compare the metallicity distributions of the GRB and DLA populations against simple disk models where these galaxies are drawn randomly from the distribution of star-forming galaxies according to their star-formation rate and HI cross-section respectively. We find that it is possible to match both observational distributions assuming very simple and constrained relations between luminosity, metallicity, metallicity gradients and HI sizes. The simple model can be tested by observing the luminosity distribution of GRB host galaxies and by measuring the luminosity and impact parameters of DLA selected galaxies as a function of metallicity. Our results support the expectation that GRB and DLA samples, in contrast with magnitude limited surveys, provide an almost complete census of star-forming galaxies at z ≈ 3.

We review the properties of the gas surrounding high-redshift gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) assessed through the analysis of damped Lyman-alpha systems (DLAs) identified in their afterglow spectra. These GRB-DLAs are characterized by large H I column densities with a median of N(H I) = 1021.7 cm−2, no molecular gas signatures, metallicities ranging from 1/100 to nearly solar with a median exceeding 1/10 solar, and no anomalous abundance patterns. The detection of the atomic Mg lines and the time-variability of the fine-structure lines demonstrates that the majority of the neutral gas along the GRB sightlines is located between 50 pc and a few kpc from the GRB. This implies that this gas is presumably associated with the ambient interstellar medium of the host galaxy and that the derived properties from low-ionization lines do not directly constrain the local environment of the GRB progenitor. The highly ionized gas, traced by N V lines, which could result from a pre-existing H II region produced by the GRB progenitor and neighboring OB stars, appears on the other hand to be very local to the GRB at about 10 pc, yielding a snapshot of the medium's physical conditions at this radius.

By means of chemical evolution models for galaxies of different morphological types (i.e. spirals and irregular/starburst galaxies) we study the nature of Damped Lyman-alpha (DLA) systems. By focusing on individual systems, we can derive important constraints on both their star formation history and their age. Our results indicate that the local conterparts of most DLAs are represented by dwarf galaxies having had low star formation rates, but some systems can also be associated to spirals. Some systems are already old, with ages of ∼1 Gyr, and some others are experiencing the very first star formation episodes.

Absorbers seen in the spectrum of background quasars are a unique tool to select HI-rich galaxies at all redshifts. These allow us to determine the cosmological evolution of H I gas, $\Omega_{\rm HI+HeII}$, a possible indicator of gas consumption as star formation proceeds. The damped Lyman-$\alpha$ systems (DLAs with NHI$\ge$ 10$^{20.3}$ cm$^{-2}$) in particular are believed to contain a large fraction of the H I gas, but there are also indications that lower column density systems, namely “sub-damped Lyman-$\alpha$” systems play a role at high-redshift. Here we present the discovery of high-redshift sub-DLAs based on 17 $z>4$ quasar spectra observed with the Ultraviolet-Visual Echelle Spectrograph (UVES) on VLT. This sample is composed of 21 new sub-DLAs which, together with another 10 systems from previous ESO archive studies, make up a homogeneous sample. The redshift evolution of the number density of several classes of absorbers is derived and shows that all systems seem to be evolving in the redshift range from $z=5$ to $z\sim3$. The redshift evolution of the column density distribution, $f(N,z)$, down to NHI=10$^{19}$ cm$^{-2}$ is also presented. A departure from a power law due to a flattening of $f(N,z)$ in the sub-DLA regime is present in the data. $f(N,z)$ is further used to determine the H I gas mass contained in sub-DLAs at $z>2$. The complete sample shows that sub-DLAs are important at all redshifts from $z=5$ to $z=2$.

We took advantage of the ESO UVES/VLT archive of quasar spectra to build a homogeneous sample of ‘sub-DLAs’, absorption line systems with HI column densities between 1019 and 2×1020 cm−2. According to Péroux et al. (2002), these systems should contain a major fraction of the neutral hydrogen mass at z > 3.5 and may thus play an important role at high redshift. Twelve sub-DLAs have been identified. We performed a detailed chemical analysis, and addressed the issues of photoionization corrections. We obtained the first sub-DLA chemical abundance data base ideal for the study of a number of interesting properties of these systems. The implication of sub-DLAs in the cosmic metallicity evolution was our main concern. We also undertook a detailed comparison of the sub-DLA chemical properties with the well studied DLAs to see whether the sub-DLAs are associated with a different class of objects.