The Dust Budget of the SMC: Are AGB Stars the Primary Dust Source at Low Metallicity?

Abstract

We estimate the total dust input from the cool evolved stars in the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC), using the 8 micron excess emission as a proxy for the dust-production rate. We find that Asymptotic Giant Branch (AGB) and red supergiant (RSG) stars produce (8.6-9.5) x 10^7 solar masses per year of dust, depending on the fraction of far-infrared sources that belong to the evolved star population (with 10%-50% uncertainty in individual dust-production rates). RSGs contribute the least (<4%), while carbon-rich AGB stars (especially the so-called "extreme" AGB stars) account for 87%-89% of the total dust input from cool evolved stars. We also estimate the dust input from hot stars and supernovae (SNe), and find that if SNe produce 10^-3 solar masses of dust each, then the total SN dust input and AGB input are roughly equivalent. We consider several scenarios of SNe dust production and destruction and find that the interstellar medium (ISM) dust can be accounted for solely by stellar sources if all SNe produce dust in the quantities seen around the dustiest examples and if most SNe explode in dense regions where much of the ISM dust is shielded from the shocks. We find that AGB stars contribute only 2.1% of the ISM dust. Without a net positive contribution from SNe to the dust budget, this suggests that dust must grow in the ISM or be formed by another unknown mechanism.

10 pages, 5 figures. Accepted for publication in ApJ

References in corpus (24)

• Herschel Detects a Massive Dust Reservoir in Supernova 1987A
• Evolution of interstellar dust and stardust in the solar neighbourhood
• Freshly Formed Dust in the Cassiopeia A Supernova Remnant as Revealed by the Spitzer Space Telescope
• Surveying the Agents of Galaxy Evolution in the Tidally-Stripped, Low Metallicity Small Magellanic Cloud (SAGE-SMC). I. Overview
• The State of the Gas and the Relation Between Gas and Star Formation at Low Metallicity: the Small Magellanic Cloud
• Spitzer SAGE-SMC Infrared Photometry of Massive Stars in the Small Magellanic Cloud
• Surveying the Agents of Galaxy Evolution in the Tidally-Stripped, Low Metallicity Small Magellanic Cloud (SAGE-SMC) II. Cool Evolved Stars
• The Origin of Dust in the Early Universe: Probing the Star Formation History of Galaxies by their Dust Content
• Spitzer Space Telescope Infrared Imaging and Spectroscopy of the Crab Nebula
• The Magellanic zoo: Mid-infrared Spitzer spectroscopy of evolved stars and circumstellar dust in the Magellanic Clouds
• Molecules and dust production in the Magellanic Clouds
• Dust yields in clumpy SN shells: SN 1987A revisited
• The Mass-Loss Return From Evolved Stars to the LMC: Empirical Relations for Excess Emission at 8 and 24 μm
• Giants in the globular cluster omega Centauri: dust production, mass loss and distance
• The mass-loss return from evolved stars to the Large Magellanic Cloud V. The GRAMS carbon-star model grid
• Spitzer spectroscopy of carbon stars in the Small Magellanic Cloud
• Dust-driven Winds and Mass Loss of C-rich AGB Stars with subsolar Metallicities
• The Mass-Loss Return from Evolved Stars to the Large Magellanic Cloud IV: Construction and Validation of a Grid of Models for Oxygen-Rich AGB Stars, Red Supergiants, and Extreme AGB Stars
• Photometric and Spectroscopic Evolution of the Type IIP SN 2007it to Day 944
• Dust production and mass loss in the Galactic globular cluster 47 Tucanae
• Properties of newly formed dust by SN2006jc based on near-to-mid infrared observation with AKARI
• Spitzer spectra of evolved stars in omega Centauri and their low-metallicity dust production
• Metal-rich carbon stars in the Sagittarius Dwarf Spheroidal galaxy
• The remnant of SN1987A revealed at (sub-)mm wavelengths

Cited by in corpus (97)

• Constraining the thermally-pulsing asymptotic giant branch phase with resolved stellar populations in the Small Magellanic Cloud
• Dust formation in the oxygen-rich AGB star IK Tau
• The ATLAS3D Project - XXVIII. Dynamically-driven star formation suppression in early-type galaxies
• Dust and Gas in the Magellanic Clouds from the HERITAGE Herschel Key Project. I. Dust Properties and Insights into the Origin of the Submm Excess Emission
• Constraining the thermally pulsing asymptotic giant branch phase with resolved stellar populations in the Large Magellanic Cloud
• Dust Formation in Milky Way-like Galaxies
• Scientific Discovery with the James Webb Space Telescope
• Evolution of Thermally Pulsing Asymptotic Giant Branch Stars II. Dust production at varying metallicity
• The dust budget crisis in high-redshift submillimetre galaxies
• Dust production 680-850 million years after the Big Bang
• The dust production rate of AGB stars in the Magellanic Clouds
• Dust grains from the heart of supernovae
• The nature of the interstellar medium of the starburst low-metallicity galaxy Haro11: a multi-phase model of the infrared emission
• Dust input from AGB stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud
• Luminosities and mass-loss rates of Local Group AGB stars and Red Supergiants
• The Importance of Physical Models for Deriving Dust Masses and Grain Size Distributions in Supernova Ejecta I: Radiatively Heated Dust in the Crab Nebula
• Evolution of Thermally Pulsing Asymptotic Giant Branch Stars V: Constraining the Mass Loss and Lifetimes of Intermediate Mass, Low Metallicity AGB Stars
• The evolved-star dust budget of the Small Magellanic Cloud: the critical role of a few key players
• An Infrared Census of DUST in Nearby Galaxies with Spitzer (DUSTiNGS), II. Discovery of Metal-poor Dusty AGB Stars
• The Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbon Mass Fraction on a 10 pc scale in the Magellanic Clouds
• AGB stars in the LMC: evolution of dust in circumstellar envelopes
• An Infrared Census of DUST in Nearby Galaxies with Spitzer (DUSTiNGS), I. Overview
• Dust Destruction Rates and Lifetimes in the Magellanic Clouds
• The influence of supernova remnants on the interstellar medium in the Large Magellanic Cloud seen at 20--600 $\mu$m wavelengths
• Spitzer Infrared Spectrographic point source classification in the Small Magellanic Cloud
• The global gas and dust budget of the Small Magellanic Cloud
• Evolved Massive Stars at Low-metallicity V. Mass-Loss Rate of Red Supergiant Stars in the Small Magellanic Cloud
• Is there a metallicity ceiling to form carbon stars? - A novel technique reveals a scarcity of C stars in the inner M31 disk
• Carbon-rich dust production in metal-poor galaxies in the Local Group
• The infrared spectral properties of Magellanic carbon stars
• The mass-loss, expansion velocities and dust production rates of carbon stars in the Magellanic Clouds
• The Spatial Distribution of Dust and Stellar Emission of the Magellanic Clouds
• Estimating the dust production rate of carbon stars in the Small Magellanic Cloud
• The Large Magellanic Cloud as a laboratory for Hot Bottom Burning in massive Asymptotic Giant Branch stars
• Maximally dusty star-forming galaxies: Supernova dust production and recycling in Local Group and high-redshift galaxies
• METAL: The Metal Evolution, Transport, and Abundance in the Large Magellanic Cloud Hubble program. II. Variations of interstellar depletions and dust-to-gas ratio within the LMC
• Pulsation-triggered dust production by asymptotic giant branch stars
• METAL: The Metal Evolution, Transport, and Abundance in the Large Magellanic Cloud Hubble program. I. Overview and Initial Results
• Dust Abundance Variations in the Magellanic Clouds: Probing the Lifecycle of Metals with All-Sky Surveys
• Revisiting the Impact of Dust Production from Carbon-Rich Wolf-Rayet Binaries
• Carbon star wind models at solar and sub-solar metallicities: a comparative study. I. Mass loss and the properties of dust-driven winds
• Modelling the alumina abundance of oxygen-rich evolved stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud
• Identification of a Class of Low-Mass Asymptotic Giant Branch Stars Struggling to Become Carbon Stars in the Magellanic Clouds
• First stellar spectroscopy in Leo P
• The Herschel Planetary Nebula Survey (HerPlaNS) I. Data Overview and Analysis Demonstration with NGC 6781
• The evolution of Galactic planetary nebula progenitors through the comparison of their nebular abundances with AGB yields
• On the nature of the most obscured C-rich AGB stars in the Magellanic Clouds
• Evolution of dust and molecular hydrogen in the Magellanic System
• Evolved stars in the Local Group galaxies. I. AGB evolution and dust production in IC 1613
• Far-reaching Dust Distribution in Galaxy Disks
• A Dramatic Decrease in Carbon Star Formation in M31
• Evolved Massive Stars at Low-metallicity II. Red Supergiant Stars in the Small Magellanic Cloud
• Endothermic self-interacting dark matter in Milky Way-like dark matter haloes
• The dustiest Post-Main sequence stars in the Magellanic Clouds
• Planetary Nebulae in the Small Magellanic Cloud
• Origin of Dust around V1309 Sco
• The Isaac Newton Telescope monitoring survey of Local Group dwarf galaxies. I. Survey overview and first results for Andromeda I
• ALMA reveals sunburn: CO dissociation around AGB stars in the globular cluster 47 Tucanae
• A Spitzer/IRAC Characterization of Galactic AGB and RSG Stars
• Dusty Stellar Birth and Death in the Metal-Poor Galaxy NGC 6822
• A WISE view on extreme AGB stars
• Extended Dust Emission from Nearby Evolved Stars
• The mass-loss rates of red supergiants at low metallicity: Detection of rotational CO emission from two red supergiants in the Large Magellanic Cloud
• Optical properties of amorphous carbon dust around C-stars: new constraints from 2MASS and Gaia observations
• Evolved Massive Stars at Low-metallicity IV. Using 1.6 $\mu$m "H-bump" to identify red supergiant stars: a case study of NGC 6822
• Probing the baryon cycle of galaxies with SPICA mid- and far-infrared observations
• A Spitzer Space Telescope survey of extreme Asymptotic Giant Branch stars in M32
• Dust composition and mass-loss return from the luminous blue variable R71 in the LMC
• A study of carbon-rich post-AGB stars in the Milky Way to understand the production of carbonaceous dust from evolved stars
• Characterizing AGB stars in Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) bands
• Are extreme AGB stars post-common envelope binaries?
• A Census of Thermally-Pulsing AGB stars in the Andromeda Galaxy and a First Estimate of their Contribution to the Global Dust Budget
• Cold dust but warm gas in the unusual elliptical galaxy NGC 4125
• The Isaac Newton Telescope monitoring survey of Local Group dwarf galaxies. II. The star formation history of Andromeda I derived from long period variables
• AlFoCS + F3D II: unexpectedly low gas-to-dust ratios in the Fornax galaxy cluster
• Examining the Infrared Variable Star Population Discovered in the Small Magellanic Cloud Using the SAGE-SMC Survey
• From Dust to Nanodust: Resolving Circumstellar Dust from the Colliding-Wind Binary Wolf-Rayet (WR) 140
• The dust and gas content of carbon stars toward the Galactic Halo
• The Isaac Newton Telescope Monitoring Survey of Local Group Dwarf Galaxies. VI. The Star Formation History and Dust Production in Andromeda IX
• Oxygen-rich dust production in IC 10
• Far-ultraviolet Dust Extinction and Molecular Hydrogen in the Diffuse Milky Way Interstellar Medium
• Smoke on the wind: dust nucleation in archetype colliding wind pinwheel WR104
• The contribution by luminous blue variable stars to the dust content of the Magellanic Clouds
• Toward a better understanding of the mid-infrared emission in the LMC
• An Infrared Study of the Circumstellar Material Associated with the Carbon Star R Sculptoris
• Planetary Nebulae of the Large Magellanic Cloud II: the connection with the progenitors' properties
• Can planet formation resolve the dust budget crisis in high redshift galaxies?
• Modelling dust extinction in the Magellanic Clouds
• Stellar dust production and composition in the Magellanic Clouds
• The Identification of Extreme Asymptotic Giant Branch Stars and Red Supergiants in M33 by 24 μm Variability
• The Nearby Evolved Stars Survey III: First data release of JCMT CO-line observations
• Temporal Changes in the Infrared Spectra of Magellanic Carbon Stars
• SMC-Last Mosaic Images
• Dust Production around Carbon-Rich Stars: The Role of Metallicity
• The dwarf irregular galaxy NGC 6822. II. Young, intermediate and old stellar populations: comparison between theory and observations
• Constraining properties of dust formed in Wolf-Rayet binary WR 112 using mid-infrared and millimeter observations
• The Nearby Evolved Stars Survey II: Constructing a volume-limited sample and first results from the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope