First Light And Reionisation Epoch Simulations (FLARES) III: The properties of massive dusty galaxies at cosmic dawn

TL;DR

This paper uses advanced simulations to study the properties of massive dusty galaxies during the Epoch of Reionisation, revealing their spectral energy distributions, luminosity functions, and dust temperatures, with results aligning with observations but highlighting some discrepancies.

Contribution

It presents detailed predictions of dust-driven galaxy properties at high redshift using the FLARES simulations combined with radiative transfer post-processing, offering new insights into early galaxy evolution.

Findings

Most results agree with current observations.

IRX-$eta$ relation follows local starburst trend.

Dust temperature correlates strongly with sSFR.

Abstract

Using the First Light And Reionisation Epoch Simulations (\textsc{Flares}) we explore the dust driven properties of massive high-redshift galaxies at $z\in[5,10]$. By post-processing the galaxy sample using the radiative transfer code \textsc{skirt} we obtain the full spectral energy distribution. We explore the resultant luminosity functions, IRX-$\beta$ relations as well as the luminosity-weighted dust temperatures in the Epoch of Reionisation (EoR). We find that most of our results are in agreement with the current set of observations, but under-predict the number densities of bright IR galaxies, which are extremely biased towards the most overdense regions. We see that the \textsc{Flares} IRX-$\beta$ relation (for $5\le z\le8$) predominantly follows the local starburst relation. The IRX shows an increase with stellar mass, plateauing at the high-mass end ($\sim10^{10}$M$_{\odot}$) and shows no evolution in the median normalisation with redshift. We also look at the dependence of the peak dust temperature ($T_{\mathrm{peak}}$) on various galaxy properties including the stellar mass, IR luminosity and sSFR, finding the correlation to be strongest with sSFR. The luminosity-weighted dust temperatures increase towards higher redshifts, with the slope of the $T_{\mathrm{peak}}$ - redshift relation showing a higher slope than the lower redshift relations obtained from previous observational and theoretical works. The results from \textsc{Flares}, which is able to provide a better statistical sample of high-redshift galaxies compared to other simulations, provides a distinct vantage point for the high-redshift Universe.