Circumstellar Dust Around AGB Stars and Implications for Infrared Emission from Galaxies

Abstract

Stellar population synthesis (SPS) models are used to infer many galactic properties including star formation histories, metallicities, and stellar and dust masses. However, most SPS models neglect the effect of circumstellar dust shells around evolved stars and it is unclear to what extent they impact the analysis of SEDs. To overcome this shortcoming we have created a new set of circumstellar dust models, using the radiative transfer code DUSTY Ivezic et al. 1999, for asymptotic giant branch (AGB) stars and incorporated them into the Flexible Stellar Population Synthesis code. The circumstellar dust models provide a good fit to individual AGB stars as well as the IR color-magnitude diagrams of the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds. IR luminosity functions from the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds are not well-fit by the 2008 Padova isochrones when coupled to our circumstellar dust models, and so we adjusted the lifetimes of AGB stars in the models to provide a match to the data. We show, in agreement with previous work, that circumstellar dust from AGB stars can make a significant contribution to the IR ($\gtrsim 4\mu m$) emission from galaxies that contain relatively little diffuse dust, including low-metallicity and/or non-star forming galaxies. Our models provide a good fit to the mid-IR spectra of early-type galaxies. Circumstellar dust around AGB stars appears to have a small effect on the IR SEDs of metal-rich star-forming galaxies (i.e., when A${}_{\mathrm{V}}$ $\gtrsim$~0.1). Stellar population models that include circumstellar dust will be needed to accurately interpret data from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and other IR facilities.

19 pages, 18 figures, accepted to ApJ

References in corpus (14)

• Infrared Emission from Interstellar Dust. IV. The Silicate-Graphite-PAH Model in the Post-Spitzer Era
• The propagation of uncertainties in stellar population synthesis modeling I: The relevance of uncertain aspects of stellar evolution and the IMF to the derived physical properties of galaxies
• The ACS Nearby Galaxy Survey Treasury
• The ACS Nearby Galaxy Survey Treasury IX. Constraining asymptotic giant branch evolution with old metal-poor galaxies
• Mid-IR Luminosities and UV/Optical Star Formation Rates at z<1.4
• The dust production rate of AGB stars in the Magellanic Clouds
• Evolution of Thermally Pulsing Asymptotic Giant Branch Stars IV. Constraining Mass-Loss & Lifetimes of Low Mass, Low Metallicity AGB Stars
• The ages, metallicities and star formation histories of early-type galaxies in SDSS
• 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
• A Comparison of Optical and Near-Infrared Colours of Magellanic Cloud Star Clusters with Predictions of Simple Stellar Population Models
• The Mass-Loss Return from Evolved Stars to the Large Magellanic Cloud II: Dust Properties for Oxygen-Rich Asymptotic Giant Branch Stars
• The Ages of Elliptical Galaxies from Infrared Spectral Energy Distributions
• Dissecting the Spitzer color-magnitude diagrams of extreme LMC AGB stars
• FIREWORKS U38-to-24 micron photometry of the GOODS-CDFS: multi-wavelength catalog and total IR properties of distant Ks-selected galaxies

Cited by in corpus (19)

• GALEX-SDSS-WISE Legacy Catalog (GSWLC): Star Formation Rates, Stellar Masses and Dust Attenuations of 700,000 Low-redshift Galaxies
• Constraining the thermally pulsing asymptotic giant branch phase with resolved stellar populations in the Large Magellanic Cloud
• Radial distribution of dust, stars, gas, and star-formation rate in DustPedia face-on galaxies
• The Extended IRTF Spectral Library: Expanded coverage in metallicity, temperature, and surface gravity
• The SLUGGS Survey: stellar masses and effective radii of early-type galaxies from Spitzer Space Telescope 3.6$\mu$m imaging
• Comparison of Stellar Population Model Predictions Using Optical and Infrared Spectroscopy
• The first large catalogue of spectroscopic redshifts in Webb's First Deep Field, SMACS J0723.3$-$7327
• Deep Realistic Extragalactic Model (DREaM) Galaxy Catalogs: Predictions for a Roman Ultra-Deep Field
• GOALS-JWST: Revealing the Buried Star Clusters in the Luminous Infrared Galaxy VV 114
• Across the Green Valley with HST grisms: colour evolution, crossing time-scales and the growth of the red sequence at $z=1.0-1.8$
• The correlation between WISE 12 $\mu$m emission and molecular gas tracers on sub-kpc scales in nearby star-forming galaxies
• Metallicity and Age of the Stellar Stream Around the Disk Galaxy NGC 5907
• Impact of stellar population synthesis choices on forward modelling-based redshift distribution estimates
• The Luminosity and Stellar Mass Functions of Red W1-W2 Galaxies
• Simulation-based inference of galaxy properties from JWST pixels
• On the precision of full-spectrum fitting of simple stellar populations. II. The dependence on star cluster mass in the wavelength range 0.3-5.0 $\mu$m
• The Space Density of Intermediate Redshift, Extremely Compact, Massive Starburst Galaxies
• pop-cosmos: Insights from generative modeling of a deep, infrared-selected galaxy population
• Improved SED-Fitting Assumptions Result in Inside-Out Quenching at $z\sim 0.5$ and Quenching at All Radii Simultaneously at $z\sim 1$