Dust Properties in Afterglow of GRB071025 at z~5: Evidence for Supernovae-produced Dust in the Early Universe

It is crucial to understand the dust properties in the early universe since they provide important clues about how the early cosmic star formation should be interpreted in the presence of dust extinction. GRB 071025 is an unusually red GRB that occured at high redshift, offering an unique opportunity to study the dust properties in the early universe. We investigate the extinction properties of GRB 071025 through the analysis of RIJHK data obtained with the 1-m telescope at Mt. Lemmon Optical Astronomy Observatory (LOAO) and Simultaneous Quad Infrared Imaging Device (SQIID) on the Kitt-Peak Mayall 4-m telescope. Our dataset is independent from that in a previous work (Perley et al. 2010) where a small systematic photometric errors could complicate the interpretation. After determining the temporal power law exponent with five I-band frames from LOAO, we construct a multi-band monochromatic SED of the GRB afterglow. By using various extinction laws, we find that the SED is best fitted with models that incorporate SNe II dust and derive a photometric redshift of 4.99(+0.12/-0.03). Our results strongly support the prior claim that dusts in GRB 071025 originate mainly from supernovae, implying SNe II predominantly contributed to the dust enrichment in the early universe (z ~ 5).