Dust enrichment from core-collapse supernovae and extinction curves in the high-redshift universe

TL;DR

This study models how dust from core-collapse supernovae evolves and affects extinction curves in early galaxies, considering reverse shock destruction and various stellar parameters, aligning with JWST observations.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed model of dust grain evolution from supernovae, including reverse shock effects, to explain high-redshift galaxy extinction features.

Findings

Reverse shock reduces dust-to-stellar mass ratio by two orders of magnitude.

Amorphous carbon dominates dust composition after reverse shock processing.

Models match observed UV attenuation curves and emissivity of high-redshift galaxies.

Abstract

Recent JWST observations have revealed that some galaxies at $z \gtrsim 7$ generally exhibit relatively flat ultraviolet (UV) attenuation curves and a weak UV bump. These features suggest that the first dust grains formed rapidly, possibly originating from core-collapse supernovae (SNe). We investigate the time evolution of grain size distributions and extinction curves in the early phase of dust enrichment for different parameters of progenitor stars, rotation velocities, metallicity, and interstellar medium densities, including the effect of the reverse shock. We model a single starburst system assuming an initial mass function. Extinction curves are calculated from the grain size distribution for each dust species. The total dust-to-stellar mass ratio at $30 \,\mathrm{Myr}$ is $M_\mathrm{dust}/M_\star \sim 10^{-3}$ before the passage of the reverse shock, but we find it to be at most $M_\mathrm{dust}/M_\star \sim 10^{-5}$ due to the destruction effect of the reverse shock. This effect destroys grains smaller than $\sim 10\,\mathrm{nm}$ and makes amorphous carbon the dominant species, resulting in a flatter extinction curve with a wide bump at $2500\,\mathrm{\mathring{A}}$ compared to the no-reverse shock models. We find that our models are consistent with the observed attenuation curve and emissivity of high-redshift galaxies and show that the reverse shock processing significantly affects dust enrichment and grain properties such as extinction curves and emissivity in supernova yields for high-redshift galaxies.