Intergalactic medium metal enrichment through dust sputtering

We study the motion of dust grains into the intergalactic medium (IGM) around redshift z= 3, to test the hypothesis that grains can efficiently pollute the gas with metals through sputtering. We use the results available in the literature for radiation-driven dust ejection from galaxies as initial conditions and follow the motion onwards. Via this mechanism, grains are ejected into the IGM with velocities >100 km s-1 as they move supersonically, grains can be efficiently eroded by non-thermal sputtering. However, Coulomb and collisional drag forces effectively reduce the charged grain velocity. Up-to-date sputtering yields for graphite and silicate (olivine) grains have been derived using the code TRANSPORT OF IONS IN MATTER (TRIM), for which we provide analytic fits. After training our method on a homogeneous density case, we analyse the grain motion and sputtering in the IGM density field as derived from a Λ cold dark matter (CDM) cosmological simulation at z= 3.27. We found that only large (a>~ 0.1μm) grains can travel up to considerable distances (few ×100 kpc physical) before being stopped. Resulting metallicities show a well-defined trend with overdensity δ. The maximum metallicities are reached for 10 < δ < 100[corresponding to systems, in quasi-stellar object (QSO) absorption spectra, with 14.5 < log N(HI) < 16]. However the distribution of sputtered metals is very inhomogeneous, with only a small fraction of the IGM volume polluted by dust sputtering (filling factors of 18 per cent for Si and 6 per cent for C). For the adopted size distribution, grains are never completely destroyed; nevertheless, the extinction and gas photoelectric heating effects resulting from this population of intergalactic grains are well below current detection limits.