The early Universe was dust-rich and extremely hot

TL;DR

This study reveals that the early universe was rich in dust and extremely hot, with significant implications for understanding galaxy formation and the evolution of cosmic dust properties at high redshifts.

Contribution

It provides new evidence of abundant dust and high dust temperatures in galaxies at redshifts up to 8, using stacking analysis of a large galaxy sample.

Findings

Elevated far-infrared luminosity density up to z=8

Dust temperature reaches 100 +- 12 K at z ~ 7

Insights into how early galaxies have been missed in previous surveys

Abstract

We investigate the dust properties and star-formation signature of galaxies in the early universe by stacking 111227 objects in the recently released COSMOS catalogue on maps at wavelengths bracketing the peak of warmed dust emission. We find an elevated far-infrared luminosity density to redshift 8, indicating abundant dust in the early universe. We further find an increase of dust temperature with redshift, reaching 100 +- 12 K at z ~ 7, suggesting either the presence of silicate rich dust originating from Population II stars, or sources of heating beyond simply young hot stars. Lastly, we try to understand how these objects have been missed in previous surveys, and how to design observations to target them. All code, links to the data, and instructions to reproduce this research in full are located at https://github.com/marcoviero/simstack3/.