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S19B0126abst

S19B0126

We propose a Subaru/COMICS high spatial resolution N-band (11.7 ¡m) imaging survey of warm (∼500 K) dust around 25 dust-producing Wolf-Rayet (WR) stars. Such dusty WR stars, thought to all be binary, have been previously overlooked as significant contributors to the dust budget in galaxies in the local and early Universe due to improbable formation channels in the framework of single-star evolution. However, recent observational studies (e.g. Sana et al. 2012, 2014) have shown that most, if not all, massive stars are binaries that should interact over their lifetimes. When incorporating binary interaction in stellar evolutionary models, the formation of WR binaries becomes feasible at low metallicities in early Universe galaxies. In this proposed survey, we aim to characterize the dust production modes of known dusty WR systems by searching for extended emission indicative of episodic/periodic dust formation events presumably at periastron in wide binaries. By identifying such dust production modes, we can estimate the total dust production rate from dusty WR populations and apply the results to binary population synthesis models to predict their contribution to the dust budget in early Universe galaxies.

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