The formation and cosmic evolution of dust in the early Universe. I. Dust sources

Understand

Dust-obscured star formation has dominated the cosmic history of star formation since z = 4.

• However, the recent finding of significant amount of dust in galaxies out to z = 8 has opened the new frontier of investigating the origin of dust also in the earliest phases of galaxy formation, within the first 1.5 billion years from the Big Bang.
• This is a key and rapid transition phase for the evolution of dust, as galaxy evolutionary timescales become comparable with the formation timescales of dust.
• Our aim is to provide an overview of the several findings on dust formation and evolution at z > 4, and of the theoretical efforts to explain the observational results.