Recent observations with the James Webb Space Telescope are yielding
tantalizing hints of an early population of massive, bright galaxies at z>10, with Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) observations indicating
significant dust masses as early as zβΌ7. To understand the implications
of these observations, we use the DELPHI semi-analytic model that jointly
tracks the assembly of dark matter halos and their baryons, including the key
processes of dust enrichment. Our model employs only two redshift- and
mass-independent free parameters (the maximum star-formation efficiency and the
fraction of supernova energy that couples to gas) that are tuned against all
available galaxy data at zβΌ5β9 before it is used to make predictions up
to zβΌ20. Our key results are: (i) the model under-predicts the observed
ultraviolet luminosity function (UV LF) at z>12; observations at z>16 lie
close to, or even above, a "maximal" model where all available gas is turned
into stars; (ii) UV selection would miss 34\% of the star formation rate
density at zβΌ5, decreasing to 17\% by zβΌ10 for bright galaxies
with MUVβ<β19; (iii) the dust mass (Mdβ) evolves with the stellar
mass (Mββ) and redshift as log(Mdβ)=1.194log(Mββ)+0.0975zβ5.433;
(iv) the dust temperature increases with stellar mass, ranging between 30β33
K for MβββΌ109β11Mββ galaxies at zβΌ7. Finally, we predict
the far infrared LF at zβΌ5β20, testable with ALMA observations, and
caution that spectroscopic redshifts and dust masses must be pinned down before
invoking unphysical extrema in galaxy formation models