2009/07/16 by V. Buat, T. T. Takeuchi, D. Burgarella +2 · 38 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Astronomy and Astrophysical Research #Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena #Galaxy #Galaxy formation and evolution #Infrared #Luminosity #Luminosity function #Luminous infrared galaxy #Radio galaxy #Scientific Research and Discoveries #Star formation #astro-ph.CO
paper · pdf · doi:10.1051/0004-6361/200912024
published in Astronomy and Astrophysics 507(2), 693-704 (EDP Sciences) · 13 pages. accepted for publication (Astronomy and Astrophysics)
arxiv created 2009/07/16 · openalex publication_date 2009/09/03 · arxiv updated 2015/05/13 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
<i>Aims. <i/> We want to study the IR (>m) emission of galaxies selected on the basis of their rest-frame UV light in a very homogeneous way (wavelength and luminosity) from to . We compare their UV and IR rest-frame emission to study the evolution in dust attenuation with <i>z<i/> as well as to check if a UV selection is capable of tracking all star formation. This UV selection will also be compared to a sample of Lyman break galaxies selected at .<i>Methods. <i/>We select galaxies in UV (1500–1800 Å) rest-frame at , , , and with as Lyman break galaxies at , the samples are compiled to sample the same range of luminosity at any redshift. The UV rest-frame data come from GALEX for and the <i>U<i/>-band of the EIS survey (at ). The UV data are combined with the IRAS 60 <i>μ<i/>m observations at and the Spitzer data at m for sources. The evolution in the IR and UV luminosities with <i>z<i/> is analysed for individual galaxies as well as in terms of luminosity functions.<i>Results. <i/>The ratio is used to measure dust attenuation. This ratio does not seem to evolve significantly with <i>z<i/> for the bulk of our sample galaxies, but some trends are found for both galaxies with a strong dust attenuation and UV luminous sources: galaxies with are more frequent at than at , and the largest values of are found for UV faint objects; in contrast, the most luminous galaxies of our samples (), detected at , exhibit a lower dust attenuation than fainter ones. The value of increases with the <i>K<i/> rest-frame luminosity of the galaxies at all redshifts considered and shows a residual anticorrelation with <i>L<i/><sub>UV<sub/>. The most massive and UV luminous galaxies exhibit quite high specific star formation rates. Lyman break galaxies exhibit systematically lower dust attenuation than UV-selected galaxies of same luminosity, but similar specific star formation rates. The analysis of the UV + IR luminosity functions leads to the conclusion that up to , most of the star formation activity of UV-selected galaxies is emitted in IR. Although we are able to infer information about all the star formation from our UV selection at , at we miss a large fraction of galaxies more luminous than . The effect is found to be larger for Lyman break galaxies.