CEERS: Forging the First Dust -- Transition from Stellar to ISM Grain Growth in the Early Universe
Abstract
We investigate the coevolution of metals and dust for 173 galaxies at 4.0<z<11.4 observed with JWST/NIRSpec. We use the code CIGALE that integrates photometric and spectroscopic data. Our analysis reveals a critical transition at Mstar = 10^8.5 MSun, from galaxies dominated by supernovae and AGB stardust, to those dominated by grain growth. This implies a two-mode building of dust mass, supported by model predictions. The detection of stardust galaxies provides a natural and inherent explanation to the excess of UV-bright galaxies at z>10 by JWST. Besides, we observe that the metallicity of galaxies at z>8 presents a metal-to-stellar mass ratio larger than a few 10^-3, above a floor. This suggests a very fast rise of metals at high redshift, impacting the tentative detections of population III objects.
- Publication:
-
arXiv e-prints
- Pub Date:
- October 2024
- DOI:
- 10.48550/arXiv.2410.23959
- arXiv:
- arXiv:2410.23959
- Bibcode:
- 2024arXiv241023959B
- Keywords:
-
- Astrophysics - Astrophysics of Galaxies;
- Astrophysics - Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics
- E-Print:
- This paper is submitted. It contains a main paper with 5 figures and 2 tables, plus supplementary materials