Probing Cosmic Dust of the Early Universe through High-Redshift Gamma-Ray Bursts

Abstract

We explore the extinction properties of the dust in the distant universe through the afterglows of high-redshifted GRBs based on the "Drude" model which, unlike previous studies, does not require a prior assumption of template extinction laws. We select GRB070802 at z~2.45 (which shows clear evidence for the 2175Åextinction bump) and GRB050904 at z~6.29, the 2nd most distant GRB observed to date. We fit their afterglow spectra to determine the extinction of their host galaxies. We find that (1) their extinction curves differ substantially from that of the Milky Way, the Small and Large Magellanic Clouds (which were widely adopted as template extinction laws in literature); (2) the 2175Åextinction feature appears to be also present in GRB050904 at z~6.29; and (3) there does not appear to show strong evidence for a dependence of dust extinction on redshifts. The inferred extinction curves are closely reproduced in terms of a mixture of amorphous silicate and graphite, both of which are expected supernova condensates and have been identified in primitive meteorites as presolar grains originating from supernovae (which are considered as the main source of dust at high-z).

14 pages, 3 figures, 2 tables; accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal Letters

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Cited by in corpus (7)

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• Diffuse Interstellar Bands and the Ultraviolet Extinction Curves: The Missing Link Revisited
• Expected dust grain size distributions in galaxies detected by ALMA at $z>7$
• Fires in the deep: The luminosity distribution of early-time gamma-ray-burst afterglows in light of the Gamow Explorer sensitivity requirements
• The nature of Long-GRB host galaxies from chemical abundances
• Probing the spectral shape of dust emission with the DustPedia galaxy sample
• Constraining the Metallicities of Damped Ly$\alpha$ Systems Using Extinction Curves