ALMA Chemical Evolution (ACE) survey: dust-to-gas ratios in sub-solar metallicity galaxies at cosmic noon

Abstract

Dust is a fundamental component of the interstellar medium and provides a key tracer of the baryon cycle that regulates galaxy evolution. The dust-to-gas ratio links metals in the gas phase to those locked into dust grains, making it a sensitive diagnostic of dust production, grain growth, and destruction. We present measurements of the dust-to-molecular-gas ratio ($\rm DGR_{mol}$), for typical star-forming galaxies ($\log M_\star \approx 10$) at sub-solar metallicites, at $z\simeq2-2.5$ from the ALMA Chemical Evolution (ACE) survey. By combining ALMA CO and dust-continuum observations with robust gas-phase metallicity measurements, ACE extends direct dust and molecular-gas measurements to lower stellar masses and lower metallicities than previously available at this epoch, reaching down to $0.4\,Z_{\odot}$. This enables the first constraints on the $\rm DGR_{mol}$--metallicity relation for typical unlensed galaxies at cosmic noon. We find that $\rm DGR_{mol}$ increases with metallicity, with a log-space slope of $1.2 \pm 0.7$, indicating that metal-poor galaxies have systematically lower $\rm DGR_{mol}$ than their more metal-rich counterparts. For the detected ACE galaxies, we measure a mean value of $\log_{10}(M_{\rm dust}/M_{\rm mol})=-2.37\pm0.05$ for a mean metallicity of 12+$\log (\rm O/H) = 8.45 \pm 0.02$. We find agreement with $\rm DGR_{mol}$ in the local Universe at fixed metallicities, indicating that the same dust-growth physics, likely grain growth in the ISM, dominates at metallicities of $8.3 \leq 12+\log(\rm O/H) \leq 8.7$ at cosmic noon. These measurements provide novel empirical constraints for models of dust enrichment and galaxy evolution during the peak epoch of cosmic star formation. Additionally, ACE provides a sub-solar metallicity reference for the calibration of dust continuum as tracer of molecular gas, essential for studying metal-poor, high-redshift systems.