CEERS: Forging the First Dust Grains in the Universe? A Population of Galaxies with spectroscopically-derived Extremely Low Dust Attenuation (GELDA) at 4.0

2025/04/17 by Burgarella, Denis, Buat, Véronique, Theulé, Patrice +35 · 3 citations
#Astrophysics of Galaxies (astro-ph.GA) #FOS: Physical sciences

paper · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2504.13118

Abstract

We investigate the coevolution of metals and dust in 173 galaxies at 4.08.8 (83.3%) than at z<8.8 (26.3%) suggesting they dominate the early Universe. Assuming a prior FIR dust spectrum (from ALPINE), we examine dust-stellar mass trends. The M_dust vs. M_star diagram shows upper and lower sequences linked by possible transitional galaxies. A transition at M_star=10⁸.5 M_\odot (Z_crit=12+log₁₀(O/H)=7.60 or Z/Z_\odot=0.1) may mark the shift from stellar dust production to ISM grain growth, in agreement with theoretical predictions. Our full sample has a high mean gas fraction (f_gas>0.9), indicating retained gas across all galaxies. Their small sizes and large gas masses imply high gas surface densities but relatively low star formation efficiency. High-redshift GELDAs may naturally explain the observed excess of bright galaxies at z>9 compared to theoretical expectations.

Cited by

• The ALPINE-CRISTAL-JWST Survey: The Fast Metal Enrichment of Massive Galaxies at z~5
• PRIMAger General Observer programs: a \Large π-sr Infrared Survey and other General Observer wide-field programs
• MEGA: Spectrophotometric SED Fitting of Little Red Dots Detected in JWST MIRI

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• CEERS: Forging the First Dust -- Transition from Stellar to ISM Grain Growth in the Early Universe
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• Dust evolution across cosmic times as seen through DUSTY-GAEA
• Bridging Theory and Observations: Insights into Star Formation Efficiency and Dust Attenuation in z > 5 Galaxies
• Rapid Dust Formation in the Early Universe