Dust depletion of metals from local to distant galaxies I: Peculiar nucleosynthesis effects and grain growth in the ISM

Abstract

Large fractions of metals are missing from the observable gas-phase in the interstellar medium (ISM) because they are incorporated into dust grains, a phenomenon called dust depletion. The study of dust depletion in the ISM is important to investigate the origin and evolution of metals and cosmic dust. Here we aim at characterizing the dust depletion of several metals from the Milky Way to distant galaxies. We collect ISM metal column densities from absorption-line spectroscopy in the literature, and in addition, we determine Ti and Ni column densities from a sample of 70 damped Lyman-$\alpha$ absorbers (DLAs) towards quasars, observed with UVES/VLT. We use ISM relative abundances to estimate the dust depletion of 18 metals (C, P, O, Cl, Kr, S, Ge, Mg, Si, Cu, Co, Mn, Cr, Ni, Al, Ti, Zn and Fe) for different environments (the Milky Way, the Magellanic Clouds (MCs), DLAs towards quasars and towards gamma-ray bursts). We observe linear relations between the depletion of each metal and the strength of dust depletion, which we trace with the observed [Zn/Fe]. In the neutral ISM of the MCs we find small deviations from linearity observed as an overabundance of the $\alpha$-elements Ti, Mg, S and an underabundance of Mn. The deviations disappear if we assume that all OB stars observed towards the MCs in our sample have an $\alpha$-element enhancement and Mn underabundance. This may imply that the MCs have been recently enriched in $\alpha$-elements, potentially due to recent bursts of star formation. The observed strong correlations of the depletion sequences of the metals all the way from low metallicity QSO-DLAs to the Milky Way suggest that cosmic dust has a common origin, independently of the star formation history, which varies significantly between these different galaxies. This supports the importance of grain growth in the ISM as a significant process of dust production.

30 pages, 35 figures, 12 tables, Accepted for publication in A&A, Abstract abridged for arXiv

References in corpus (26)

• A Unified Representation of Gas-Phase Element Depletions in the Interstellar Medium
• Galactic chemical evolution: Carbon through Zinc
• The chemical make-up of the Sun: A 2020 vision
• A dusty, normal galaxy in the epoch of reionization
• Evolution of interstellar dust and stardust in the solar neighbourhood
• The Cosmic Baryon and Metal Cycles
• Velocity-Metallicity Correlation for high-z DLA Galaxies: Evidence for a Mass-Metallicity Relation?
• Molecular hydrogen in high-redshift Damped Lyman-alpha systems: The VLT/UVES database
• Sulphur and zinc abundances in Galactic halo stars revisited
• APOGEE Chemical Abundance Patterns of the Massive Milky Way Satellites
• Reconciling the Metallicity Distributions of Gamma-ray Burst, Damped Lyman-alpha, and Lyman-break Galaxies at z=3
• The cycle of interstellar dust in galaxies of different morphological types
• The origin and evolution of the odd-Z iron-peak elements Sc, V, Mn, and Co in the Milky Way stellar disk
• The R136 star cluster dissected with Hubble Space Telescope/STIS. II. Physical properties of the most massive stars in R136
• Evolution of the dust-to-metals ratio in high-redshift galaxies probed by GRB-DLAs
• Discovery of a Perseus-like cloud in the early Universe: HI-to-H2 transition, carbon monoxide and small dust grains at zabs=2.53 towards the quasar J0000+0048
• The Metal-Strong Damped Lyman-alpha Systems
• Manganese trends in a sample of thin and thick disk stars. The origin of Mn
• The origin of dust in galaxies across cosmic time
• Large Metallicity Variations in the Galactic Interstellar Medium
• The Alpha-element knee of the Sagittarius Stream
• The Nitrogen and Oxygen abundances in the neutral gas at high redshift
• 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
• Atomic data for Zn II - Improving Spectral Diagnostics of Chemical Evolution in High-redshift Galaxies
• The high A_V Quasar Survey: A z=2.027 metal-rich damped Lyman-alpha absorber towards a red quasar at z=3.21
• Dust-depletion sequences in damped Ly-α absorbers II. The composition of cosmic dust, from low-metallicity systems to the Galaxy

Cited by in corpus (17)

• JADES: Carbon enrichment 350 Myr after the Big Bang in a gas-rich galaxy
• Dissecting the interstellar medium of a z=6.3 galaxy: X-shooter spectroscopy and HST imaging of the afterglow and environment of the Swift GRB 210905A
• Dust depletion of of metals from local to distant galaxies II: Cosmic dust-to-metal ratio and dust composition
• The interplay between feedback, accretion, transport and winds in setting gas-phase metal distribution in galaxies
• The cosmic build-up of dust and metals. Accurate abundances from GRB-selected star-forming galaxies at $1.7<z<6.3$
• Metal and dust evolution in ALMA REBELS galaxies: insights for future JWST observations
• Detection of Dust in High-Velocity Cloud Complex C -- Enriched Gas Accreting onto the Milky Way
• Interpreting the Si II and C II line spectra from the COS Legacy Spectroscopic SurveY using a virtual galaxy from a high-resolution radiation-hydrodynamic simulation
• Proximate molecular quasar absorbers: Chemical enrichment and kinematics of the neutral gas
• Chemical diversity of gas in distant galaxies: The metal and dust enrichment and variations within absorbing galaxies
• A Bayesian chemical evolution model of the DustPedia Galaxy M74
• KBSS-InCLOSE I: Design and First Results from the Inner CGM of QSO Line Of Sight Emitting Galaxies at z~2-3
• Investigating chemical variations between interstellar gas clouds in the Solar neighbourhood
• Interstellar Ices as Carriers of Supernova Material to the Early Solar System
• Rapid Response Mode observations of GRB 160203A: Looking for fine-structure line variability at z=3.52
• The optical constants and grain sizes of interstellar dust measured directly using the dust scattered x-ray halo of GRB 221009A
• Connecting the dusty dots: dust depletion and extinction of local interstellar clouds