The cosmic buildup of dust and metals

Accurate abundances from GRB-selected star-forming galaxies at 1.7 < z < 6.3

¹ Cosmic Dawn Center (DAWN), Denmark
² Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, Jagtvej 128, 2200 Copenhagen N, Denmark
e-mail: keh14@hi.is
³ European Southern Observatory, Karl-Schwarzschild Str. 2, 85748 Garching bei München, Germany
⁴ Department of Astronomy, University of Geneva, Chemin Pegasi 51, 1290 Versoix, Switzerland
⁵ Astronomical Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences (ASU-CAS), Fričova 298, 251 65 Ondřejov, Republic Czech
⁶ Centre de Recherche Astrophysique de Lyon, CNRS, Univ. Claude Bernard Lyon 1, 9 Av. Charles André, 69230 Saint-Genis-Laval, France
⁷ Centre for Astrophysics Research, University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield AL10 9AB, UK
⁸ Department of Astronomy, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611, USA
⁹ Excellence Cluster ORIGINS, Boltzmannstraße 2, 85748 Garching, Germany
¹⁰ Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Schellingstraße 4, 80799 München, Germany
¹¹ INAF – Osservatorio astronomico di Brera, Via Bianchi 46, Merate, (LC) 23807, Italy
¹² Space Science Data Center (SSDC) – Agenzia Spaziale Italiana (ASI), 00133 Roma, Italy
¹³ INAF – Osservatorio Astronomico di Roma, Via Frascati 33, 00040 Monte Porzio Catone, Italy
¹⁴ Mathematics, Informatics, Physics and Earth Science Department of Messina University, Papardo campus, Via F. S. D’Alcontres 31, 98166 Messina, Italy
¹⁵ Clemson University, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Clemson, SC 29634, USA
¹⁶ INAF – Osservatorio Astronomico di Capodimonte, Salita Moiariello 16, 80131 Napoli, Italy
¹⁷ DARK, Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, Jagtvej 128, 2200 Copenhagen, Denmark
¹⁸ Centre for Astrophysics and Cosmology, Science Institute, University of Iceland, Dunhagi 5, 107 Reykjavik, Iceland
¹⁹ The George Washington University, Department of Physics, 725 21st street NW, Washington, DC 20052, USA
²⁰ Department of Astrophysics/IMAPP, Radboud University, 6525 AJ, Nijmegen, The Netherlands
²¹ Max-Planck-Institut für Astrophysik, Karl-Schwarzschild-Str. 1, Garching b. München 85741, Germany
²² INAF – Osservatorio di Astrofisica e Scienza dello Spazio, Via Piero Gobetti 93/3, 40129 Bologna, Italy
²³ GEPI, Observatoire de Paris, Université PSL, CNRS, 5 place Jules Janssen, 92190 Meudon, France
²⁴ Institut d’Astrophysique de Paris and Sorbonne Université, 98bis Boulevard Arago, 75014 Paris, France
²⁵ Anton Pannekoek Institute for Astronomy, University of Amsterdam, PO Box 94249 1090 GE Amsterdam, The Netherlands
²⁶ Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF) Istituto di Astrofisica Spaziale e Fisica Cosmica, Via Alfonso Corti 12, 20133 Milano, Italy
²⁷ Physics Department, University of Calabria, 87036 Arcavacata di Rende, CS, Italy
²⁸ INFN – Laboratori Nazionali di Frascati, Frascati, Italy
²⁹ Department of Physics, University of Bath, Claverton Down, Bath BA2 7AY, UK
³⁰ Institut für Theoretische Physik, Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität, Max-von-Laue-Str. 1, 60438 Frankfurt am Main, Germany
³¹ Istituto di Astrofisica e Planetologia Spaziali di Roma, 00133 Roma, Italy
³² INFN, Sezione di Roma, 00185 Roma, Italy
³³ School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Leicester, University Road, Leicester LE1 7RH, UK
³⁴ Artemis, Observatoire de la Côte d’Azur, Université Côte d’Azur, CNRS, 06304 Nice, France
³⁵ Physics Department, Lancaster University, Lancaster LA1 4YB, UK
³⁶ School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences, Macquarie University, NSW 2109, Australia

Received: 10 July 2023
Accepted: 28 August 2023

Abstract

The chemical enrichment of dust and metals in the interstellar medium of galaxies throughout cosmic time is one of the key driving processes of galaxy evolution. Here we study the evolution of the gas-phase metallicities, dust-to-gas (DTG) ratios, and dust-to-metal (DTM) ratios of 36 star-forming galaxies at 1.7 < z < 6.3 probed by gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). We compiled all GRB-selected galaxies with intermediate- (ℛ = 7000) to high-resolution (ℛ > 40 000) spectroscopic data, including three new sources, for which at least one refractory (e.g., Fe) and one volatile (e.g., S or Zn) element have been detected at S/N > 3. This is to ensure that accurate abundances and dust depletion patterns can be obtained. We first derived the redshift evolution of the dust-corrected, absorption-line-based gas-phase metallicity, [M/H]_tot, in these galaxies, for which we determine a linear relation with redshift [M/H]_tot(z) = (−0.21 ± 0.04)z − (0.47 ± 0.14). We then examined the DTG and DTM ratios as a function of redshift and through three orders of magnitude in metallicity, quantifying the relative dust abundance both through the direct line-of-sight visual extinction, A_V, and the derived depletion level. We used a novel method to derive the DTG and DTM mass ratios for each GRB sightline, summing up the mass of all the depleted elements in the dust phase. We find that the DTG and DTM mass ratios are both strongly correlated with the gas-phase metallicity and show a mild evolution with redshift as well. While these results are subject to a variety of caveats related to the physical environments and the narrow pencil-beam sightlines through the interstellar medium probed by the GRBs, they provide strong implications for studies of dust masses that aim to infer the gas and metal content of high-redshift galaxies, and particularly demonstrate the large offset from the average Galactic value in the low-metallicity, high-redshift regime.