Astronomy

If you are here, you’re probably already a believer in the incredible importance of dust in astrophysics.   More than half the optical/UV photons ever emitted in the Universe have been impacted by astrophysical dust.  Dust serves as a critical catalyst for interstellar chemistry, as well as a regulator of the thermodynamics of the ISM.  At the same time, dust can serve as a tracer of the physical processes that govern galaxy evolution.

As a community, we are poised to make significant steps in our understanding of astrophysical dust in the coming years. The very recently launched JWST is already revolutionizing our understanding of the physics of cosmic dust. The near and mid-infrared spectrographs on Webb are transforming our spatially resolved view of PAHs, while the near infrared cameras are advancing our understanding of extinction and attenuation in this wavelength regime.  At the same time, ALMA will continue to provide resolved maps of dust emission from the most obscured objects in the Universe, while single dish facilities such as SPT and LMT willenable the discovery of the dustiest starbursts during the Epoch of Reionization. In the next decade, the Next Generation VLA (ngVLA) will come online, facilitating detailed studies of enigmatic emission features such as anomalous microwave emission, postulated to arise from the smallest dust gains. On the theoretical side, the next generation of cosmological galaxy formation simulations are poised to include, for the first time, self consistent models for the complex interplay between dust evolution, star formation, and stellar/black hole feedback.  The time is ripe to convene, discuss state-of-the art observational and theoretical results, and make headway toward identifying areas of consensus.

• Grain size distributions and dust extinction laws
• Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs): Underlying physics and observational constraints at low and high-z
• Dust lifecycle: formation, growth, and destruction in normal environments
• Dust attenuation in galaxies
• Spectral Energy Distribution (SED) fitting techniques
• The impact of dust on derived galaxy properties near and far
• Dust emission as tracer of galaxy properties near and far
• Foregrounds, and the impact on precision cosmology
• Global dust to gas and dust to metals ratios/integrated measurements
• The First dust: dusty galaxies in the Epoch of Reionization
• Dusty starburst galaxies at high-redshift
• Compact Obscured Nuclei (CONs)