Probing infrared eXcess to investigate early-universe dust (PIXIEDust)

Bakx, Tom J. L. C., Algera, Hiddo S. B., Jolly, Jean-Baptiste, Esmerian, Clarke, Knudsen, Kirsten, Sommovigo, Laura, Witstok, Joris, Carniani, Stefano, Chen, Jianhang, Eales, Stephen ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7394-426X, Ferrara, Andrea, Fudamoto, Yoshinobu, Hagimoto, Masato, Hashimoto, Takuya, Inami, Hanae, Inoue, Akio K., Khouri, Theo, Mitsuhashi, Ikki, Nyman, Gunnar, Olander, Gustav, Serjeant, Stephen, Smit, Renske, Yoon, Ilsang, Zavala, Jorge, Aalto, Susanne, Casey, Caitlin M., Tamura, Yoichi and Vlemmings, Wouter 2025. Probing infrared eXcess to investigate early-universe dust (PIXIEDust). Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society , staf2284. 10.1093/mnras/staf2284

PDF - Accepted Post-Print Version Available under License Creative Commons Attribution. Download (2MB)

Abstract

Despite the implied presence of dust through reddened UV emission in high-redshift galaxies, no dust emission has been detected in the (sub)millimetre regime beyond z > 8.3. This study combines around two hundred hours of Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) and Northern Extended Millimeter Array (NOEMA) observations on ten z > 8 galaxies, revealing no significant dust emission down to a 1σ depth of 2.0, 2.0, and 1.5 μJy at rest-frame 158, 88 μm, and across all the data, respectively. This constrains average dust masses to be below <105 M⊙ at 3σ and dust-to-stellar mass ratios to be below 3.7 × 10−4 (assuming Tdust = 50 K and βdust = 2.0). Binning by redshift (8 < z < 9.5 and 9.5 < z < 15), UV-continuum slope (βUV≶ − 2) and stellar mass (⁠⁠) yields similarly stringent constraints. Combined with other studies, these results are consistent with inefficient dust build-up in the z > 8 Universe, likely due to inefficient supernova production, limited interstellar grain growth and/or ejection by outflows. We provide data and tools online to facilitate community-wide high-redshift dust searches.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	In Press
Schools:	Schools > Physics and Astronomy
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
ISSN:	0035-8711
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	8 January 2026
Date of Acceptance:	22 December 2025
Last Modified:	08 Jan 2026 14:45
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/183734

Actions (repository staff only)

Edit Item