BEDE: Bayesian estimates of dust evolution for nearby galaxies

De Vis, Pieter, Maddox, Steve ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5549-195X, Gomez, Haley, Jones, A P and Dunne, Loretta ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9880-2543 2021. BEDE: Bayesian estimates of dust evolution for nearby galaxies. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 505 (3) , pp. 3228-3246. 10.1093/mnras/stab1604

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Abstract

We build a rigorous statistical framework to provide constraints on the chemical and dust evolution parameters for nearby late-type galaxies with a wide range of gas fractions (⁠3 per cent<94 per cent⁠). A Bayesian Monte Carlo Markov Chain framework provides statistical constraints on the parameters used in chemical evolution models. Nearly a million one-zone chemical and dust evolution models were compared to 340 galaxies. Relative probabilities were calculated from the χ2 between data and models, marginalized over the different time-steps, galaxy masses, and star formation histories. We applied this method to find ‘best-fitting’ model parameters related to metallicity, and subsequently fix these metal parameters to study the dust parameters. For the metal parameters, a degeneracy was found between the choice of initial mass function, supernova metal yield tables, and outflow prescription. For the dust parameters, the uncertainties on the best-fitting values are often large except for the fraction of metals available for grain growth, which is well constrained. We find a number of degeneracies between the dust parameters, limiting our ability to discriminate between chemical models using observations only. For example, we show that the low dust content of low-metallicity galaxies can be resolved by either reducing the supernova dust yields and/or including photofragmentation. We also show that supernova dust dominates the dust mass for low-metallicity galaxies and grain growth dominates for high-metallicity galaxies. The transition occurs around 12 + log (O/H) = 7.75, which is lower than found in most studies in the literature.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Published Online
Status:	Published
Schools:	Physics and Astronomy
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
ISSN:	0035-8711
Funders:	ERC
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	15 May 2023
Date of Acceptance:	29 May 2021
Last Modified:	19 May 2023 06:20
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/159518

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