Astro2020 Science White Paper: Are Supernovae the Dust Producer in the Early Universe?

Abstract

Whether supernovae are a significant source of dust has been a long- standing debate. The large quantities of dust observed in high- redshift galaxies raise a fundamental question as to the origin of dust in the Universe since stars cannot have evolved to the AGB dust-producing phase in high-redshift galaxies. In contrast, supernovae occur within several millions of years after the onset of star formation. This white paper focuses on dust formation in supernova ejecta with US-Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) perspective during the era of JWST and LSST.

Publication
arXiv e-prints