Carbonaceous dust grains seen in the first billion years of cosmic time
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Large dust reservoirs (up to approximately 108 M⊙) have been detected1–3 in galaxies out to redshift z ≃ 8, when the age of the Universe was only about 600 Myr. Generating substantial amounts of dust within such a short timescale has proven challenging for theories of dust formation4, 5 and has prompted the revision of the modelling of potential sites of dust production6–8, such as the atmospheres of asymptotic giant branch stars in low-metallicity environments, supernova ejecta and the accelerated growth of grains in the interstellar medium. However, degeneracies between different evolutionary pathways remain when the total dust mass of galaxies is the only available observable. Here we report observations of the 2,175 Å dust attenuation feature, which is well known in the Milky Way and galaxies at z ≲ 3 (refs. 9–11), in the near-infrared spectra of galaxies up to z ≃ 7, corresponding to the first billion years of cosmic time. The relatively short timescale implied for the formation of carbonaceous grains giving rise to this feature12 suggests a rapid production process, possibly in Wolf–Rayet stars or supernova ejecta.
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Acknowledgements: This work is based on observations made with the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope. The data were obtained from the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under NASA contract NAS 5-03127 for JWST. These observations are associated with programmes 1180, 1210, 1895 and 1963. We acknowledge the FRESCO team led by PI P. Oesch for developing their observing programme with a zero-exclusive-access period. J.W. gratefully acknowledges support from the Fondation MERAC. J.W., R.M., M.C., F.D.E., T.J.L., W.M.B., L.S. and J.S. acknowledge support from the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC), the European Research Council (ERC) through Advanced Grant 695671, QUENCH, and a Frontier Research grant RISEandFALL from UK Research and Innovation. R.S. acknowledges support from an STFC Ernest Rutherford Fellowship (ST/S004831/1). R.M. also acknowledges funding from a research professorship from the Royal Society. S. Carniani acknowledges support from the European Union’s Horizon Europe ERC Starting Grant No. 101040227 – WINGS. E.C.-L. acknowledges support from an STFC Webb Fellowship (ST/W001438/1). S. Arribas, B.R.d.P. and M.P. acknowledge support from the research project PID2021-127718NB-I00 of the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation/State Agency of Research (MICIN/AEI). A.J.B., A.J.C., J.C. and A.S. acknowledge funding from a FirstGalaxies Advanced Grant from the ERC under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement no. 789056). S. Alberts acknowledges support from the JWST Mid-Infrared Instrument Science Team Lead (grant no. 80NSSC18K0555) from NASA Goddard Space Flight Center to the University of Arizona. E.E., D.J.E., B.D.J., M.R., B.E.R., F.S. and C.N.A.W. acknowledge the JWST/NIRCam contract to the University of Arizona (ANAS5-02015). D.J.E. is supported as a Simons Investigator. M.P. acknowledges support from the Programa Atracción de Talento de la Comunidad de Madrid (grant no. 2018-T2/TIC-11715). C.C.W. is supported by NOIRLab, which is managed by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy under a cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation. This research is supported in part by the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for All Sky Astrophysics in 3 Dimensions (ASTRO 3D), through project no. CE170100013. This study made use of the Prospero high-performance computing facility at Liverpool John Moores University. We acknowledge use of the lux supercomputer at the University of California, Santa Cruz, funded by the Major Research Instrumentation Program of the National Science Foundation (grant no. AST 1828315).
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1476-4687
