Radial properties of dust in galaxies: Comparison between observations and isolated galaxy simulations

¹ Sterrenkundig Observatorium, Ghent University, Krijgslaan 281 – S9, 9000 Gent, Belgium
² Dept. Fisica Teorica y del Cosmos, Universidad de Granada, Granada, Spain
³ Department of Physics, Graduate School of Science, The University of Tokyo, 7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-0033, Japan
⁴ Institute of Space and Astronautical Science, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, 3-1-1 Yoshinodai, Chuo-ku, Sagamihara, Kanagawa 252-5210, Japan
⁵ Instituto Universitario Carlos I de Física Teórica y Computacional, Universidad de Granada, 18071 Granada, Spain
⁶ Universitäts-Sternwarte, Fakultät für Physik, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Scheinerstr. 1, D-81679 München, Germany
⁷ Max-Planck-Institut für Extraterrestrische Physik, Giessenbachstr. 1, D-85741 Garching, Germany
⁸ Excellence Cluster ORIGINS, Boltzmannstr. 2, D-85748 Garching, Germany
⁹ Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Academia Sinica, Astronomy-Mathematics Building, No. 1, Section 4, Roosevelt Road, Taipei 106216, Taiwan
¹⁰ Theoretical Astrophysics, Department of Earth and Space Science, Osaka University, 1-1 Machikaneyama, Toyonaka, Osaka 560-0043, Japan
¹¹ Theoretical Joint Research, Forefront Research Center, Osaka University, 1-1 Machikaneyama, Toyonaka, Osaka 560-0043, Japan
¹² Kavli IPMU (WPI), UTIAS, The University of Tokyo, Kashiwa, Chiba 277-8583, Japan
¹³ Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, 4505 S. Maryland Pkwy, Las Vegas, NV 89154-4002, USA
¹⁴ Dipartimento di Fisica e Astronomia “Augusto Righi”, Alma Mater Studiorum, Università di Bologna, Via Gobetti 93/2, 40129 Bologna, Italy
¹⁵ INAF – Osservatorio di Astrofisica e Scienza dello Spazio di Bologna, Via Gobetti 93/3, 40129 Bologna, Italy
¹⁶ Physics Department, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Be’er-Sheva 84105, Israel
¹⁷ Department of Physics, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT 06269, USA

^⋆ Corresponding author; stefan.stefananthonyvandergiessen@ugent.be

Received: 26 August 2024
Accepted: 12 October 2024

Abstract

We study the importance of several processes that influence the evolution of dust and its grain size distribution on spatially resolved scales in nearby galaxies. Here, we compiled several multi-wavelength observations for the nearby galaxies NGC 628 (M74), NGC 5457 (M101), NGC 598 (M33), and NGC 300. We applied spatially resolved spectral energy distribution (SED) fitting to the latest iteration of infrared data to get constraints on the galaxy dust masses and the small-to-large grain abundance ratio (SLR). We separated each galaxy into radial rings and obtained the radial profiles of the properties mentioned above. For comparison, we took the radial profiles of the stellar mass and gas mass surface density for NGC 628 combined with its metallicity gradient in the literature to calibrate a single-galaxy simulation using the GADGET4-OSAKA code. The simulations include a parametrization to separate the dense and diffuse phases of the ISM where different dust-evolution mechanisms are in action. We find that our simulation can reproduce the radial profile of dust mass surface density but overestimates the SLR in NGC 628. Changing the dust-accretion timescale has little impact on the dust mass or SLR, as most of the available metals are accreted onto dust grains at early times (< 3 Gyr), except in the outer regions of the galaxy where the metallicity is below 2 × 10⁻³. This suggests we can only constrain the accretion timescale of galaxies at extremely low metallicities where accretion still competes with other mechanisms controlling the dust budget. The overestimation of the SLR likely results from (i) overly efficient shattering processes in the diffuse interstellar medium (ISM), which were calibrated to reproduce Milky Way-type galaxies and/or (ii) our use of a diffuse and dense gas density subgrid model that does not entirely capture the intricacies of the small-scale structure present in NGC 628. We conclude that future modeling efforts will need to focus on improving the subgrid recipes to mimic the multi-phase gas distribution in galaxies before the efficiency of dust evolution processes can be calibrated for galaxies other than the Milky Way.