The Chemical Uniformity of High-z Damped Ly(alpha) Protogalaxies

We investigate chemical abundance variations along the sight lines through 13 damped Ly(alpha) systems (DLAs). We introduce a technique designed to identify abundance variations in multiple velocity bins along the sight lines and perform a series of Monte Carlo simulations to derive quantitative limits and values. The majority of these DLAs have very uniform relative abundances: 95% c.l. upper limits of 0.2 dex dispersion along the sight line and best-fit values typically <~0.1 dex. This surprising result indicates the gas comprising individual DLAs has similar enrichment history, nearly identical differential depletion, and small abundance variations relating to ionization corrections. This uniformity contrasts with stellar abundance variations observed within the Galaxy and with the differences in abundances observed between galaxies of the Local Group. It also contrasts with variations in differential depletion along sight lines through the SMC, LMC, and Milky Way. The results constrain the process of metal production and dust formation in the early universe and reflect on processes of galaxy formation. In terms of depletion the observations indicate a very low porosity of significantly depleted gas, substantially lower than the filling factor observed in present-day metal-poor galaxies. Finally, the observed chemical uniformity may present a difficult challenge to scenarios that assume individual DLAs are composed of multiple protogalactic clumps.