Knocking on giants' doors: I. The evolution of the dust-to-stellar mass ratio in distant dusty galaxies

D. Donevski; A. Lapi; K. Małek; D. Liu; C. Gómez-Guijarro; R. Davé; K. Kraljic; L. Pantoni; A. Man; S. Fujimoto; A. Feltre; W. Pearson; Q. Li; D. Narayanan

doi:10.1051/0004-6361/202038405

paper

Knocking on giants' doors: I. The evolution of the dust-to-stellar mass ratio in distant dusty galaxies

arXiv:2008.09995 · doi:10.1051/0004-6361/202038405

Abstract

The dust-to-stellar mass ratio ( $M_{dust}$ / $M_{⋆}$ ) is a crucial yet poorly constrained quantity to understand the production mechanisms of dust, metals and stars in galaxy evolution. In this work we explore and interpret the nature of $M_{dust}$ / $M_{⋆}$ in 300 massive ( $M_{⋆} > 1 0^{10} M_{⊙}$ ), dusty star-forming galaxies detected with ALMA up to $z \approx 5$ . We find that $M_{dust}$ / $M_{⋆}$ evolves with redshift, stellar mass, specific SFR and integrated dust size, differently for main sequence and starburst galaxies. In both galaxy populations $M_{dust}$ / $M_{⋆}$ rises until $z \sim 2$ followed by a roughly flat trend towards higher redshifts. We show that the inverse relation between $M_{dust}$ / $M_{⋆}$ and $M_{⋆}$ holds up to $z \approx 5$ and can be interpreted as an evolutionary transition from early to late starburst phases. We demonstrate that $M_{dust}$ / $M_{⋆}$ in starbursts mirrors the increase in molecular gas fraction with redshift, and is enhanced in objects with the most compact dusty star-formation. The state-of-the-art cosmological simulation SIMBA broadly matches the evolution of $M_{dust}$ / $M_{⋆}$ in main sequence galaxies, but underestimates it in starbursts. The latter is found to be linked to lower gas-phase metallicities and longer dust growth timescales relative to data. Our data are well reproduced by analytical model that includes recipes for rapid metal enrichment, strongly suggesting that high $M_{dust}$ / $M_{⋆}$ is due to fast grain growth in metal enriched ISM. Our work highlights multifold benefits of using $M_{dust}$ / $M_{⋆}$ as a diagnostic tool for: (1) separating main sequence and starburst galaxies until $z \sim 5$ ; (2) probing the evolutionary phases of dusty galaxies, and (3) refining the treatment of dust life cycle in simulations.

arXiv commentAccepted for publication in A&A, main text 17 pages, 9 figures

Knocking on giants' doors: I. The evolution of the dust-to-stellar mass ratio in distant dusty galaxies

Abstract

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