Probing the dust properties of galaxies up to submillimetre wavelengths. II. Dust-to-gas mass ratio trends with metallicity and the submm excess in dwarf galaxies

By M. Galametz, S. Madden, F. Galliano, S. Hony, G. Bendo, M. Sauvage. 2011

159 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Aims. We are studying the effects of submm observations on the total dust mass and thus dust-to-gas mass ratio measurements. Methods. We gather a wide sample of galaxies that have been observed at submillimeter (submm) wavelengths to model their spectral energy distributions using submm observations (>160 μm) and then without submm observational constraints in order to quantify the error on the dust mass when submm data are not available. Our model does not make strong assumptions on the dust temperature distribution to precisely avoid submm biaises in the study. Our sample includes 52 galaxies observed at submm wavelengths. Out of these, 9 galaxies show an excess in submm which is not accounted for in our fiducial model, most of these galaxies being lowmetallicity dwarfs. We chose to add an independant very cold dust component (T = 10 K) to account for this excess. Results. We find that metal-rich galaxies modelled with submm data often show lower dust masses than when modelled without submm data. Indeed, these galaxies usually have dust SEDs that peaks at longer wavelengths and require constraints above 160 μ mt o correctly position the peak and sample the submillimeter slope of their SEDs and thus correctly cover the dust temperature distribution. On the other hand, some metal-poor dwarf galaxies modelled with submm data show higher dust masses than when modelled without submm data. Using submm constraints for the dust mass estimates, we find a tightened correlation of the dust-to-gas mass ratio with the metallicity of the galaxies. We also often find that when there is a submm excess present, it occurs preferentially in low-metallicity galaxies. We analyse the conditions for the presence of this excess and find a relation between the 160/850 μm ratio and the submm excess.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/5adadac0943fb94b00f8aac66e78009de4b8c022

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Citations in the corpus

• REGULARITY UNDERLYING COMPLEXITY: A REDSHIFT-INDEPENDENT DESCRIPTION OF THE CONTINUOUS VARIATION OF GALAXY-SCALE MOLECULAR GAS PROPERTIES IN THE MASS-STAR FORMATION RATE PLANE (2013, unknown): “…the large scatter in measured gas-to-dust ratios in local, low-metallicity and low-mass galaxies (e.g., Draine & Li 2007, Galliano et al. 2008, Galametz et al. 2011, Rémy-Ruyer et al. 2014) indicates that this method becomes highly inaccurate for z > 3 galaxies and galaxies with stellar mass…”
• VALIDATION OF THE EQUILIBRIUM MODEL FOR GALAXY EVOLUTION TO z ∼ 3 THROUGH MOLECULAR GAS AND DUST OBSERVATIONS OF LENSED STAR-FORMING GALAXIES (2013, background): “Furthermore, other studies of nearby galaxies indicate that the scatter in the δGDR − Z relation may be larger than suggested by this specific z = 0 sample, especially at low metallicities (Draine et al. 2007; Galametz et al. 2011).”
• Non-standard grain properties, dark gas reservoir, and extended submillimeter excess, probed by Herschel in the Large Magellanic Cloud (2011, methodology): “Indeed, as demonstrated by Galametz et al. (2011), modelling the SEDs of galaxies without submm data, using Eq.”
• Dust spectral energy distributions of nearby galaxies: an insight from the Herschel Reference Survey (2014, background): “A submm excess, such as the one observed at 500 µm, was already noticed by previous works in low-metallicity systems (e.g. Reach et al. 1995; Galliano et al. 2003, 2005, 2011; Bot et al. 2010; Gordon et al. 2010; Boselli et al. 2010b; Galametz et al. 2011; Boselli et al. 2012).”
• Gas-to-dust mass ratios in local galaxies over a 2 dex metallicity range (2013, methodology): “The G11 sample consists of all of the galaxies in Galametz et al. (2011) that are neither already in the DGS nor in the KINGFISH samples, and except those galaxies which show a submm excess (see Sect.”
• Evolution of Interstellar Medium, Star Formation, and Accretion at High Redshift (2017, methodology): “Fortunately, both of these prerequisites are well established from observations of nearby galaxies (e.g. Draine et al. 2007; Galametz et al. 2011).”
• The dust content of galaxies from z = 0 to z = 9 (2016, background): “…of metallicity or galaxy stellar mass (Issa, MacLaren & Wolfendale 1990; Lisenfeld & Ferrara 1998; Hirashita, Tajiri & Kamaya 2002; James et al. 2002; Hunt, Bianchi & Maiolino 2005; Draine et al. 2007; Engelbracht et al. 2008; Galametz et al. 2011; Magrini et al. 2011; Rémy-Ruyer et al. 2014a).”
• The dust scaling relations of the Herschel Reference Survey (2012, background): “The main scaling relation investigated during the preHerschel era has been the evolution of the dust-to-gas ratio with stellar mass and metallicity (e.g., Issa et al. 1990; Lisenfeld & Ferrara 1998; Popescu et al. 2002; Draine et al. 2007; Galametz et al. 2011).”
• An Overview of the Dwarf Galaxy Survey (2013, methodology): “The sensitivity provided by Herschel, along with the wide range of MIR lines that have been observed for the target galaxies with the Spitzer IRS spectrograph, provides ∼20MIR and FIR fine structure lines in a wide variety of low metallicity galaxies in the DGS. Detailed studies of the photodissocia”
• HERSCHEL FAR-INFRARED AND SUBMILLIMETER PHOTOMETRY FOR THE KINGFISH SAMPLE OF NEARBY GALAXIES (2011, background): “3 (e.g., Bolatto et al. 2000; Galliano et al. 2005; Bot et al. 2010; Gordon et al. 2010; Ade et al. 2011a,b; Galametz et al. 2011; Galliano et al. 2011).”
• The applicability of far-infrared fine-structure lines as star formation rate tracers over wide ranges of metallicities and galaxy types (2014, background): “They might, therefore, be less appropriate for metal-poor dwarfs, which are typically characterized by steeply rising mid-infrared (MIR) to far-infrared (FIR) slopes and overall SEDs peaking at wavelengths lower than ∼60 µm (e.g., Thuan et al. 1999; Houck et al. 2004; Galametz et al. 2009, 2011).”
• ESCAPE FRACTION OF IONIZING PHOTONS DURING REIONIZATION: EFFECTS DUE TO SUPERNOVA FEEDBACK AND RUNAWAY OB STARS (2014, background): “…simulated galaxies are very metal-poor (0.0 2− 0.05Z⊙) and galaxies with lower metallicity have a progressively lower amount of dust (Lisenfeld & Ferrara 1998; Engelbracht et al. 2008; Galametz et al. 2011; Fisher et al. 2013), it is unlikely that dust decreases the escape fraction substantially.”
• Physical Processes in the Interstellar Medium (2014, background): “It is often assumed that Cgd scales linearly with metallicity (e.g. Glover & Clark, 2012c), but this is at best a crude approximation, particularly as the dust abundance appears to scale non-linearly with metallicity in metal-poor galaxies (Galametz et al., 2011; Herrera-Camus et al., 2012).”
• THE EVOLUTION OF INTERSTELLAR MEDIUM MASS PROBED BY DUST EMISSION: ALMA OBSERVATIONS AT z = 0.3–2 (2014, background): “Fortunately, both of these prerequisites are well established from observations of nearby galaxies (e.g. Draine et al. 2007; Galametz et al. 2011).”
• COMBINED CO AND DUST SCALING RELATIONS OF DEPLETION TIME AND MOLECULAR GAS FRACTIONS WITH COSMIC TIME, SPECIFIC STAR-FORMATION RATE, AND STELLAR MASS (2014, background): “…mo as M M where 12 + log(O/H) again is the gas phase oxygen abundance (see also Draine et al 2007 for dust-to-gas with metallicity scalings of the SINGS nearby galaxy sample, and Galametz et al (2011) or Rémy-Ruyer et al. (2014) for lower metallicity galaxies down to 12+log(O/H)=8.0).”