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The rapid evolution of dust content in galaxies over the last five billion years

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2013

H. L. Gomez
Affiliation:
School of Physics & Astronomy, Cardiff University, The Parade, Cardiff, CF24 3AA, UK email: [email protected]
L. Dunne
Affiliation:
Dept of Physics and Astronomy, University of Canterbury, Private Bag 4800, Christchurch 8140, New Zealand email: [email protected]
D. J. B. Smith
Affiliation:
Centre for Astrophysics, Science & Technology Research Institute, University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield, Herts, AL10 9AB, UK email: [email protected]
E. da Cunha
Affiliation:
Max-Planck Institute for Astronomy, Königstuhl 17, 60115 Heidelberg, Germany email: [email protected]
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Abstract

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The Herschel-ATLAS (H-ATLAS) will provide an unrivalled sample of galaxies, probing the normal star-forming submillimetre population of galaxies for the first time. Here, we exploit the Science Demonstration Phase (SDP) data to model the evolution of the interstellar content of galaxies in recent history. The most massive H-ATLAS galaxies show a large increase in the dust content five billion years ago compared to the present epoch. These observations are difficult to explain using standard dust models, one possibility could be contributions from a non-stellar source of dust e.g. grain growth in dense clouds; this would imply that less than 10% of dust would be condensed in stellar atmospheres. Alternatively, an initial mass function which becomes top heavy at high star formation rate densities could also explain this discrepancy.

Type
Contributed Papers
Copyright
Copyright © International Astronomical Union 2013

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