The $z \lesssim 1$ drop of cosmic dust abundance in a semi-analytic framework

Understand

Observations suggest that the amount of galactic dust in the Universe decreased by a factor $\sim 2-3$ during the last $\sim 8$ Gyr.

• However, cosmological models of galaxy evolution usually struggle to explain this decrease.
• Here we use the semi-analytic model (SAM) L-Galaxies2020 to show that this drop may be reproduced assuming standard prescriptions for dust production and evolution.
• We extend the SAM with i) a state-of-the-art dust model which adopts the two-size approximation and ii) a new disc instability criterion which triggers bulge and central black hole growth.