Dust production 0.7-1.5 billion years after the Big Bang

Michał J. Michałowski

Published 2015-12-02Version 1

Cosmic dust is an important component of the Universe, and its origin, especially at high redshifts, is still unknown. I present a simple but powerful method of assessing whether dust observed in a given galaxy could in principle have been formed by asymptotic giant branch (AGB) stars or supernovae (SNe). Using this method I show that for most of the galaxies with detected dust emission between z=4 and z=7.5 (1.5-0.7 billion years after the Big Bang) AGB stars are not numerous and efficient enough to be responsible for the measured dust masses. Supernovae could account for most of the dust, but only if all of them had efficiencies close to the maximal theoretically allowed value. This suggests that a different mechanism is responsible for dust production at high redshifts, and the most likely possibility is the grain growth in the interstellar medium.