Modeling Galaxies in the Early Universe with Supernova Dust Attenuation

• Published in: The Astrophysical Journal Letters
• Main Authors: Jed McKinney, Olivia R. Cooper, Caitlin M. Casey, Julian B. Muñoz, Hollis Akins, Erini Lambrides, Arianna S. Long
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: IOP Publishing 2025-01-01
• Subjects: Galaxy evolution; High-redshift galaxies; James Webb Space Telescope; Interstellar dust
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.3847/2041-8213/add15d

Supernovae (SNe) may be the dominant channel by which dust grains accumulate in galaxies during the first Gyr of cosmic time as formation channels important for lower-redshift galaxies, e.g., asymptotic giant branch stars and grain growth, may not have had sufficient time to take over. SNe produce fewer small grains, leading to a flatter attenuation law. In this work, we fit observations of 138 spectroscopically confirmed z  > 6 galaxies adopting standard spectral energy distribution (SED) modeling assumptions and compare standard attenuation law prescriptions to a flat attenuation law. Compared to SMC dust, flat attenuation close to what may be expected from dust produced in SNe yields up to 0.5 mag higher A _V and 0.4 dex larger stellar masses. It also finds better fits to the rest-frame UV photometry with lower ${\chi }_{{\rm{UV}}}^{2}$ , allowing the observed UV luminosities taken from the models to be fainter by 0.2 dex on average. The systematically fainter observed UV luminosities for fixed observed photometry could help resolve current tension between the ionizing photon production implied by JWST observations and the redshift evolution of the neutral hydrogen fraction. Given these systematic effects and the physical constraint of cosmic time itself, fairly flat attenuation laws that could represent the properties of dust grains produced by SNe should be a standard consideration in fitting to the SEDs of z  > 6 galaxies.