GAMA/H-ATLAS: The Local Dust Mass Function and Cosmic Density as a Function of Galaxy Type - A Benchmark for Models of Galaxy Evolution

Understand

We present the dust mass function (DMF) of 15,750 galaxies with redshift $z< 0.1$, drawn from the overlapping area of the GAMA and {\it H-}ATLAS surveys.

• The DMF is derived using the density corrected $V_{\rm max}$ method, where we estimate $V_{\rm max}$ using: (i) the normal photometric selection limit ($pV_{\rm max}$) and (ii) a bivariate brightness distribution (BBD) technique, which accounts for two selection effects.
• We fit the data with a Schechter function, and find $M^{*}=(4.65\pm0.18)\times 10^{7}\,h^2_{70}\, M_{\odot}$, $\alpha=(1.22\pm 0.01)$, $\phi^{*}=(6.26\pm 0.28)\times 10^{-3}\,h^3_{70}\,\rm Mpc^{-3}\,dex^{-1}$.
• The resulting dust mass density parameter integrated down to $10^4\,M_{\odot}$ is $\Omega_{\rm d}=(1.11 \pm0.02)\times 10^{-6}$ which implies the mass fraction of baryons in dust is $f_{m_b}=(2.40\pm0.04)\times 10^{-5}$; cosmic variance adds an extra 7-17\,per\,cent uncertainty to the quoted statistical errors.