Self-consistent modelling of aromatic dust species and extinction curves in galaxy evolution

Abstract

ABSTRACT We formulate and calculate the evolution of dust in a galaxy focusing on the distinction among various dust components – silicate, aromatic carbon, and non-aromatic carbon. We treat the galaxy as a one-zone object and adopt the evolution model of grain size distribution developed in our previous work. We further include aromatization and aliphatization (inverse reaction of aromatization). We regard small aromatic grains in a radius range of 3–50 Å as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). We also calculate extinction curves in a consistent manner with the abundances of silicate and aromatic and non-aromatic carbonaceous dust. Our model nicely explains the PAH abundance as a function of metallicity in nearby galaxies. The extinction curve becomes similar to the Milky Way curve at an age of ∼10 Gyr, in terms of the carbon bump strength and the far-ultraviolet slope. We also apply our model to starburst galaxies by shortening the star formation time-scale (0.5 Gyr) and increasing the dense-gas fraction (0.9), finding that the extinction curve maintains bumpless shapes (because of low aromatic fractions), which are similar to the extinction curves observed in the Small Magellanic Cloud and high-redshift quasars. Thus, our model successfully explains the variety in extinction curve shapes at low and high redshifts.