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The evolution of the dust-to-metals ratio in high-redshift galaxies probed by GRB-DLAs

, , , , , , and .
(2016)cite arxiv:1607.00288Comment: Submitted to Astronomy & Astrophysics. 12 pages, 8 figures.

Abstract

Context: Several issues regarding the nature of dust at high redshift remain unresolved: its composition, its production and growth mechanisms, and its effect on background sources. Aims: This paper aims to provide a more accurate relation between dust depletion levels and dust-to-metals ratio (DTM), and to use the DTM to investigate the origin and evolution of dust in the high redshift Universe via GRB-DLAs. Methods: We use absorption-line measured metal column densities for a total of 19 GRB-DLAs, including five new GRB afterglow spectra from VLT/X-shooter. We use the latest linear models to calculate the dust depletion strength factor in each DLA. Using this we calculate total dust and metal column densities to determine a DTM. We explore the evolution of DTM with metallicity, and compare this to previous trends in DTM measured with different methods. Results: We find significant dust depletion in 16 of our 19 GRB-DLAs, yet 18 of the 19 have a DTM significantly lower than the Milky Way. We find that DTM is positively correlated with metallicity, which supports a dominant ISM-grain-growth mode of dust formation. We find a substantial discrepancy between the dust content measured from depletion and that derived from the total $V$-band extinction, $A_V$, measured by fitting the afterglow SED. We advise against using a measurement from one method to estimate that from the other, until the discrepancy can be resolved.

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