The Early Universe was Dust-Rich and Extremely Hot

Marco P. Viero, Guochao Sun, Dongwoo T. Chung, Lorenzo Moncelsi, Sam S. Condon

Published 2022-03-27Version 1

We investigate the dust properties and star-formation signature of galaxies in the early universe by stacking 111,227 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 10, indicating abundant dust in the early universe. We further find an increase of dust temperature with redshift, reaching ~ 119 +- 7 K at z ~ 9, 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 is located at https://github.com/marcoviero/simstack3/.