Dust formation history of galaxies: A critical role of metallicity* for the dust mass growth by accreting materials in the interstellar medium

By R. Asano, T. Takeuchi, H. Hirashita, A. Inoue. Earth, Planets and Space, 2012

162 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This paper investigates the main driver of dust mass growth in the interstellar medium (ISM) by using a chemical evolution model of a galaxy with metals (elements heavier than helium) in the dust phase, in addition to the total amount of metals. We consider asymptotic giant branch (AGB) stars, type II supernovae (SNe II), and dust mass growth in the ISM, as the sources of dust, and SN shocks as the destruction mechanism of dust. Furthermore, to describe the dust evolution precisely, our model takes into account the age and metallicity (the ratio of metal mass to ISM mass) dependence of the sources of dust. We have particularly focused on the dust mass growth, and found that in the ISM this is regulated by the metallicity. To quantify this aspect, we introduce a “critical metallicity”, which is the metallicity at which the contribution of stars (AGB stars and SNe II) equals that of the dust mass growth in the ISM. If the star-formation timescale is shorter, the value of the critical metallicity is higher, but the galactic age at which the metallicity reaches the critical metallicity is shorter. From observations, it was expected that the dust mass growth was the dominant source of dust in the Milky Way and dusty QSOs at high redshifts. By introducing a critical metallicity, it is clearly shown that the dust mass growth is the main source of dust in such galaxies with various star-formation timescales and ages. The dust mass growth in the ISM is regulated by metallicity, and we emphasize that the critical metallicity serves as an indicator to judge whether the grain growth in the ISM is the dominant source of dust in a galaxy, especially because of the strong, and nonlinear, dependence on the metallicity.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/cd3e46a246ae7894bd55dd770df03d271c2342c0

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. R. Somerville
2. P. Hopkins
3. R. Dav'e
4. L. Hernquist
5. D. Narayanan
6. Volker Springel
7. R. Maiolino
8. M. Galametz

Citations in the corpus

• The dust content of galaxies from z = 0 to z = 9 (2016, methodology): “We find a time scale of τacc,0 = 15 Myr, consistent with values adopted in earlier simulations using a similar approach for dust accretion in the ISM (e.g., Hirashita 2000b; Asano et al. 2013; de Bennassuti et al. 2014; Feldmann 2015; Schneider, Hunt & Valiante 2016).”
• 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 (2018, methodology): “Here, we employ a dust formation model developed by Asano et al. (2013a, 2013b, 2014) and Nozawa et al. (2015) to assess if the dust mass observed in MACS0416_Y1 is reproduced in the stellar age of ≈4Myr.”
• simba: Cosmological simulations with black hole growth and feedback (2019, background): “Following Hirashita (2000) and Asano et al. (2013) MNRAS 000, 1–25 (2018) which assume the accretion is a two-body collisional process, the accretion time scale τaccr is τaccr = τref ( ρref ρg ) ( Tref Tg ) ( Z Zg ) .”
• Cool outflows in galaxies and their implications (2020, background): “The dust grains produced by AGBs and SNe act as seeds that grow, via accretion, in the ISM, on a time scale (Asano et al. 2013)”
• Gas-to-dust mass ratios in local galaxies over a 2 dex metallicity range (2013, methodology): “(5) of Asano et al. 2013a).”