An empirical study of dust properties at the earliest epochs

Abstract

We present an empirical analysis of the properties of dust-continuum emission in a sample of 17 galaxies in the early Universe ($4<z<8$) with well-sampled far-infrared (FIR) spectral energy distributions (SEDs) compiled from the literature. We place our results into context by self-consistently comparing to samples of nearby star-forming galaxies, luminous infrared galaxies (LIRGs), and quasars. With the exception of two sources, we find no significant evolution in the dust emissivity index across cosmic time, measuring a consistent value of ${\beta }_{\text{IR}}=1.8\pm 0.3$ at $z>4$, suggesting the effective dust properties do not change dramatically for most galaxies. Despite having comparable stellar masses, we find the high-redshift galaxies to be similar to, or even more extreme than, LIRGs in the HERUS sample in terms of dust temperature ($T_{\text{dust}}>40\mathrm{K}$) and IR luminosity ($L_{\text{IR}}>10^{11}{\mathrm{L}}_{\odot }$). We find the dust temperature evolves mildly towards high redshift, though the LIRGs and quasars exhibit elevated temperatures indicating a more efficient and/or additional heating mechanism. Where available, we compare stellar-mass estimates to our inferred dust masses, whose degeneracy with dust temperature can only be mitigated with a well-constrained SED. In merely half of the cases the dust yield may be explained by supernovae alone, with four sources ($44\%$) significantly exceeding a highly optimistic yield where $M_{\text{dust}}\approx 0.01M_{\ast }$. We discuss possible explanations for this apparent inconsistency and potential observational biases in the measurements of the dust properties of high-redshift galaxies, including in the current IR-bright sample.

14 pages, 8 figures. Accepted for publication in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

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