Long Ago when Galaxies were Young: Probing Galaxy Evolution
with Quasar Absorption Lines
Varsha P. Kulkarni
University of South Carolina, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Columbia,
SC 29208
One of the important goals of modern astrophysics is to understand how
galaxies form and evolve and how the production of elements proceeds in
young galaxies. A unique tool to investigate distant young galaxies is
to study the absorption lines they produce when they intervene with the
light from distant background quasars. Absorption-line spectroscopy of
quasars allows us to empirically trace the progressive evolution of chemical
composition of galaxies with time. Deep imaging of absorbers with the Hubble
Space Telescope and ground-based facilites is also helping us to investigate
how the morphology and star formation rates of the absorbers evolve with
time. These observations are helping to clarify the absorber-galaxy connection,
and shedding light on the evolution of normal galaxies over the past 80%
of the age of the Universe.