Dust in the Average Galaxy: Attenuation, Emission, and Opacity from $0

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Authors: Caitlin M. Casey, Hollis B. Akins, Andrew J Battisti, Jed McKinney, Ezequiel Treister, Jorge A.A. Zavala, Hiddo Algera, M Aravena, Yingjie Cheng, Nicole E. Drakos, Andreas L. Faisst, Maximilien Franco
+34 more Seiji Fujimoto, G. Gozaliasl, Ali Hadi, Santosh Harish, Michaela Hirschmann, Olivier Ilbert, Kohei Inayoshi, Jeyhan S. Kartaltepe, Anton M. Koekemoer, Claudia del P. Lagos, Erini Lambrides, Ronaldo Laishram, D Liu, Arianna S. Long, G. Magdis, Sinclaire M. Manning, Crystal L. Martin, Felix Martinez, Richard Massey, Jacqueline McCleary, Henry Joy McCracken, L Moscardini, Desika Narayanan, Louise Paquereau, J. Rhodes, Brant E. Robertson, Rasha M Samir, Claudia M. Scarlata, Marko Shuntov, Laura Sommovigo, Aswin P. Vijayan, Wuji Wang, Can Xu, Dhruv Zimmerman
Cited by: 1

Abstract

We present constraints on the dust emission and attenuation properties of galaxies across 010^{10.5}M_\odot$. We derive empirical relationships for the effective attenuation, dust temperature, fraction of star formation that is unobscured, and dust-to-stellar mass ratio as functions of redshift and stellar mass. We separate the first order effect of star/dust geometry from dust grain properties by combining constraints on the IR SED, UV SED, and dust mass surface density. Importantly, we measure over an order of magnitude decrease in $κ_{UV}/κ_{FIR}$--the ratio of dust mass absorption coefficients in the UV at 1600Å and FIR at 500$μ$m--from z~0 to z~7. A depressed $κ_{UV}/κ_{FIR}$ is consistent with a deficit of small dust grains, possibly attributable to the intense radiation fields of high-$z$ star formation; indeed, we find a redshift-invariant inverse relationship between $κ_{UV}/κ_{FIR}$ and $Σ_{SFR}$. Most evolution in the dust-to-stellar ratio is at $z

Fields of Study & Subjects

Galaxies: Formation Evolution Phenomena Astronomy and Astrophysical Research Astrophysics and Star Formation Studies

Publication details

Journal / source
arXiv (Cornell University)
Publication date
15 June 2026
Document type
Preprint