Simulating the dust content of galaxies: successes and failures

TL;DR

This paper uses advanced cosmological simulations to study galaxy dust evolution, successfully matching some observations at low redshift but failing to reproduce the abundance of dust-rich galaxies at high redshift.

Contribution

It extends dust modeling in cosmological simulations to include thermal sputtering, providing insights into dust distribution and evolution across cosmic time.

Findings

Dust mass function matches observations at z=0.

Radial dust surface density aligns with SDSS data.

Model underpredicts dust-rich galaxies at high redshift.

Abstract

We present full volume cosmological simulations using the moving-mesh code AREPO to study the coevolution of dust and galaxies. We extend the dust model in AREPO to include thermal sputtering of grains and investigate the evolution of the dust mass function, the cosmic distribution of dust beyond the interstellar medium, and the dependence of dust-to-stellar mass ratio on galactic properties. The simulated dust mass function is well-described by a Schechter fit and lies closest to observations at $z = 0$. The radial scaling of projected dust surface density out to distances of $10 \, \text{Mpc}$ around galaxies with magnitudes $17 < i < 21$ is similar to that seen in Sloan Digital Sky Survey data, albeit with a lower normalisation. At $z = 0$, the predicted dust density of $\Omega_\text{dust} \approx 1.3 \times 10^{-6}$ lies in the range of $\Omega_\text{dust}$ values seen in low-redshift observations. We find that dust-to-stellar mass ratio anti-correlates with stellar mass for galaxies living along the star formation main sequence. Moreover, we estimate the $850 \, \mu\text{m}$ number density functions for simulated galaxies and analyse the relation between dust-to-stellar flux and mass ratios at $z = 0$. At high redshift, our model fails to produce enough dust-rich galaxies, and this tension is not alleviated by adopting a top-heavy initial mass function. We do not capture a decline in $\Omega_\text{dust}$ from $z = 2$ to $z = 0$, which suggests that dust production mechanisms more strongly dependent on star formation may help to produce the observed number of dusty galaxies near the peak of cosmic star formation.