A SINFONI Integral Field Spectroscopy Survey for Galaxy Counterparts to
  Damped Lyman-alpha Systems - V. Neutral and Ionised Phase Metallicities
  The gas-phase and stellar metallicities have proven to be important
parameters to constrain the star formation history of galaxies. However, HII
regions associated with recent star-formation may not have abundances typical
for the galaxy as a whole and it is believed that the bulk of the metals may be
contained in the neutral gas. It is therefore important to directly probe the
metal abundances in the neutral gas, which can be done by using absorption
lines imprinted on a background quasar. Recently, we have presented studies of
the stellar content of a small sample of such quasar absorbers with HI column
densities measured to be in the sub-Damped Lyman-alpha to Damped Lyman-alpha
range. Here, we present observations covering 300 nm to 2.5 microns of emission
line spectra of three of these absorbing-galaxies using the long-slit
spectrograph X-Shooter on the VLT. This allows us to compare the neutral and
ionised phase metallicities in the same objects and relates these measures to
possible signature of low-metallicity gas accretion or outflows of gas enriched
by star formation. Our results suggest that the abundances derived in
absorption along the line-of-sight to background quasars are reliable measures
of the overall galaxy metallicities. In addition to a comparison of abundances
in different phases of the gas, a potential observational consequence of
differences in fueling mechanisms for disc galaxies is the internal
distribution of their chemical abundances. We present some evidence for small
negative metallicity gradients in the three systems. The flat slopes are in
line with the differences observed between the two phases of the gas. These
results suggest that a comparison of the HI and HII metallicities is a robust
indicator of abundance gradients in high-redshift galaxies and do not favour
the presence of infall of fresh gas in these objects.
