Several years ago, we have used our chemically consistent GALEV models for the chemical evolution of galaxies in terms of a large number of individual elements in comparison to observed abundances of Damped Ly-alpha Absorbers (DLAs) in the redshift range from z>4 to z~1.5. Our results indicated that the DLA abundances and their redshift evolution could well be explained by our spiral galaxy models, i.e. these DLAs could be the high-z progenitors of present-day spirals (Lindner & Fritze 99). We predicted that these galaxies should already be very massive at these high redshifts with at least half of their present mass, albeit largely in the form of gas, and we also predicted very faint luminosities. These results have later been confirmed by kinematic evidence for rotational velocities of order 200 km/s and many non-detections and few detection with large telescopes. We also predicted a change in the DLA population towards low redshift with the early-type spirals becoming too gas-poor for detection as DLAs. SDSS has identified a large number of DLAs towards low redshift, more and better HIRES abundances have become available for high-z DLAs, and the first optical identifications of DLAs have become available. All this justifies a reanalysis and further investigations of this class of objects that contain a large fraction of the baryonic matter at high redshifts with GALEV models. This project is suitable for both on levels of an MSc or a PhD thesis.

References:
- Lindner & Fritze, A&A 341, 709 (1999)