CEERS: Forging the First Dust Grains in the Universe? A Population of Galaxies with spectroscopically-derived Extremely Low Dust Attenuation (GELDA) at 4.0<z<11.4

Abstract

We investigate the coevolution of metals and dust in 173 galaxies at $4.0<z<11.4$ using NIRSpec spectroscopy. Focusing on galaxies with extremely low dust attenuation, we explore their physical processes using a new CIGALE version that incorporates spectroscopic and photometric data. Comparing observations with models, we derive key physical parameters. We identify 49 galaxies with extremely low dust attenuation (GELDAs), characterized by $A_{FUV}=0$ within $2\sigma$ and $M_{star}<10^9{M}_{\odot }$. The stacked spectra reveal a very blue UV slope (${\beta }_{FUV}=-2.451\pm -0.066$) and Balmer decrement H$\alpha$/H$\beta =2.932\pm -0.660$, consistent with no dust attenuation. GELDAs are more common at $z>8.8$ (83.3%) than at $z<8.8$ (26.3%) suggesting they dominate the early Universe. Assuming a prior FIR dust spectrum (from ALPINE), we examine dust-stellar mass trends. The $M_{dust}$ vs. $M_{star}$ diagram shows upper and lower sequences linked by possible transitional galaxies. A transition at $M_{star}=10^8.5M_{\odot }$ ($Z_{crit}=12+{\log }_{10}(O/H)=7.60$ or $Z/Z_{\odot }=0.1$) may mark the shift from stellar dust production to ISM grain growth, in agreement with theoretical predictions. Our full sample has a high mean gas fraction ($f_{gas}>0.9$), indicating retained gas across all galaxies. Their small sizes and large gas masses imply high gas surface densities but relatively low star formation efficiency. High-redshift GELDAs may naturally explain the observed excess of bright galaxies at $z>9$ compared to theoretical expectations.

arXiv commentAccepted in A&A (May 2025)

References in corpus (101)

• Stellar population synthesis at the resolution of 2003
• Galactic Stellar and Substellar Initial Mass Function
• Seven-Year Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) Observations: Cosmological Interpretation
• The Global Schmidt Law in Star Forming Galaxies
• Cosmic Star Formation History
• CANDELS: The Cosmic Assembly Near-infrared Deep Extragalactic Legacy Survey
• CANDELS: The Cosmic Assembly Near-infrared Deep Extragalactic Legacy Survey - The Hubble Space Telescope Observations, Imaging Data Products and Mosaics
• A Highly Consistent Framework for the Evolution of the Star-Forming "Main Sequence" from z~0-6
• CIGALE: a python Code Investigating GALaxy Emission
• FIRE-2 Simulations: Physics versus Numerics in Galaxy Formation
• The Star Formation Rate and Dense Molecular Gas in Galaxies
• Gas-to-Dust mass ratios in local galaxies over a 2 dex metallicity range
• How to Measure Galaxy Star Formation Histories II: Nonparametric Models
• Star Formation and Dust Attenuation Properties in Galaxies from a Statistical UV-to-FIR Analysis
• CEERS Key Paper I: An Early Look into the First 500 Myr of Galaxy Formation with JWST
• Andromeda's Dust
• The Evolution of the Star-forming Interstellar Medium across Cosmic Time
• Two Remarkably Luminous Galaxy Candidates at $z\approx 10-12$ Revealed by JWST
• A dusty, normal galaxy in the epoch of reionization
• A CEERS Discovery of an Accreting Supermassive Black Hole 570 Myr after the Big Bang: Identifying a Progenitor of Massive z > 6 Quasars
• Dust in the reionization era: ALMA observations of a $z$=8.38 Galaxy
• The spectral evolution of the first galaxies. I. James Webb Space Telescope detection limits and color criteria for population III galaxies
• ALMA Spectroscopic Survey in the Hubble Ultra Deep Field: The Infrared Excess of UV-selected z=2-10 galaxies as a function of UV-continuum Slope and Stellar Mass
• CEERS Epoch 1 NIRCam Imaging: Reduction Methods and Simulations Enabling Early JWST Science Results
• The Dust Attenuation Law in Galaxies
• The dust content of galaxies from z = 0 to z = 9
• The ALPINE-ALMA [CII] Survey: data processing, catalogs, and statistical source properties
• The FMOS-COSMOS survey of star-forming galaxies at z ~ 1.6. I. Hα-based star formation rates and dust extinction
• Stellar sources of dust in the high redshift Universe
• On the stunning abundance of super-early, massive galaxies revealed by JWST
• Revealing Galaxy Candidates out to $z\sim 16$ with JWST Observations of the Lensing Cluster SMACS0723
• Dust formation history of galaxies: a critical role of metallicity for the dust mass growth by accreting materials in the interstellar medium
• Detection of the Far-infrared [O III] and Dust Emission in a Galaxy at Redshift 8.312: Early Metal Enrichment in the Heart of the Reionization Era
• A systematic metallicity study of DustPedia galaxies reveals evolution in the dust-to-metal ratios
• Evolution of the atomic and molecular gas content of galaxies
• On the redshift evolution (0 < z < 4) of dust attenuation and of the total (UV+IR) star formation rate density
• Spectroscopic Confirmation of CEERS NIRCam-selected Galaxies at $\mathbf{z}\simeq 8-10$
• The Dust-to-Gas and Dust-to-Metals Ratio in Galaxies from z=0-6
• How Well Can We Measure the Stellar Mass of a Galaxy: The Impact of the Assumed Star Formation History Model in SED Fitting
• Extended Schmidt Law: Role Of Existing Stars In Current Star Formation
• The dust mass in z > 6 normal star forming galaxies
• Non-parametric Star Formation History Reconstruction with Gaussian Processes I: Counting Major Episodes of Star Formation
• ISM properties of a Massive Dusty Star-Forming Galaxy discovered at z ~ 7
• The Evolution of the Baryons Associated with Galaxies Averaged over Cosmic Time and Space
• Dusty Starbursts Masquerading as Ultra-high Redshift Galaxies in JWST CEERS Observations
• JWST NIRCam+NIRSpec: Interstellar medium and stellar populations of young galaxies with rising star formation and evolving gas reservoirs
• The REBELS ALMA Survey: cosmic dust temperature evolution out to z $\sim$ 7
• Mapping dust through emission and absorption in nearby galaxies
• The ALMA REBELS Survey: Dust Continuum Detections at z > 6.5
• The ALMA REBELS Survey: the dust content of $z\sim 7$ Lyman Break Galaxies
• The equilibrium view on dust and metals in galaxies: Galactic outflows drive low dust-to-metal ratios in dwarf galaxies
• The MOSDEF Survey: the Variation of the Dust Attenuation Curve with Metallicity
• Are the ultra-high-redshift galaxies at z > 10 surprising in the context of standard galaxy formation models?
• The Balmer decrement of SDSS galaxies
• Testing the universality of the star formation efficiency in dense molecular gas
• HELP: modelling the spectral energy distributions of Herschel detected galaxies in the ELAIS N1 field
• Dust origin in late-type dwarf galaxies: ISM growth vs. type II supernovae
• The assembly of dusty galaxies at $z\ge 4$: statistical properties
• The ALMA REBELS Survey. Epoch of Reionization giants: properties of dusty galaxies at $z\approx 7$
• EMPRESS. V. Metallicity Diagnostics of Galaxies over 12+log(O/H)=~6.9-8.9 Established by a Local Galaxy Census: Preparing for JWST Spectroscopy
• Galaxy Build-up in the first 1.5 Gyr of Cosmic History: Insights from the Stellar Mass Function at $z\sim 4-9$ from JWST NIRCam Observations
• Detailed dust modelling in the L-Galaxies semi-analytic model of galaxy formation
• Feedback-Free Starbursts at Cosmic Dawn: Observable Predictions for JWST
• The Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) on the James Webb Space Telescope IV. Capabilities and predicted performance for exoplanet characterization
• Vortex buoyancy in superfluid and superconducting neutron stars
• Dust production scenarios in galaxies at z ~ 6-8.3
• The origin of dust in galaxies revisited: the mechanism determining dust content
• Dust scaling relations in a cosmological simulation
• Iron and silicate dust growth in the Galactic interstellar medium: clues from element depletions
• Fade to grey: systematic variation of the galaxy attenuation curves with galaxy properties in EAGLE
• The most distant, luminous, dusty star-forming galaxies: redshifts from NOEMA and ALMA spectral scans
• The origin of dust in galaxies across cosmic time
• Herschel-ATLAS: Revealing dust build-up and decline across gas, dust and stellar mass selected samples: I. Scaling relations
• The gas and stellar content of a metal-poor galaxy at $z=8.496$ as revealed by JWST and ALMA
• The gas, metal and dust evolution in low-metallicity local and high-redshift galaxies
• An empirical study of dust properties at the earliest epochs
• Low star formation efficiency in typical galaxies at z=5-6
• The assembly of dusty galaxies at $z\ge 4$: the build-up of stellar mass and its scaling relations with hints from early JWST data
• The SCUBA-2 Cosmology Legacy Survey: The EGS deep field - II. Morphological transformation and multi-wavelength properties of faint submillimetre galaxies
• Constraining dust formation in high-redshift young galaxies
• A new look at the infrared properties of z $\sim$ 5 galaxies
• The ALPINE-ALMA [CII] survey: Dust mass budget in the early Universe
• Supermassive Dark Star candidates seen by JWST?
• GAMA/H-ATLAS: The Local Dust Mass Function and Cosmic Density as a Function of Galaxy Type - A Benchmark for Models of Galaxy Evolution
• Elevated UV luminosity density at Cosmic Dawn explained by non-evolving, weakly mass-dependent star formation efficiency
• AGB dust and gas ejecta in extremely metal-poor environments
• Galaxies with grains: unraveling dust evolution and extinction curves with hydrodynamical simulations
• Atomic Gas Dominates the Baryonic Mass of Star-forming Galaxies at $z\approx 1.3$
• Dust evolution with MUPPI in cosmological volumes
• IR SED and Dust Masses of Sub-solar Metallicity Galaxies at z~2.3
• UV dust attenuation as a function of stellar mass and its evolution with redshift
• A $Li$ne $Me$asuring library for large and complex spectroscopic data sets: Implementation of a virtual observatory for JWST spectra
• A Dusty Locale: Evolution of Galactic Dust Populations from Milky Way to Dwarf-Mass Galaxies
• DUSTiER (DUST in the Epoch of Reionization): dusty galaxies in cosmological radiation-hydrodynamical simulations of the Epoch of Reionization with RAMSES-CUDATON
• Metal and dust evolution in ALMA REBELS galaxies: insights for future JWST observations
• Probing the inner kpc of massive galaxies with strong gravitational lensing
• The cold interstellar medium of a normal sub-$L^{\star }$ galaxy at the end of reionization
• IR characteristic emission and dust properties of star-forming galaxies at 4.5 $<$ z $<$ 6.2
• Understanding the Star Formation Efficiency in Dense Gas: Initial Results from the CAFFEINE Survey with ArTéMiS
• A${}^3$COSMOS: the dust mass function and dust mass density at $0.5<z<6$
• Can Dark Stars account for the star formation efficiency excess at very high redshifts?

Cited by in corpus (1)

• Modelling the evolution and influence of dust in cosmological simulations that include the cold phase of the interstellar medium