2015/03/13 by Irene Shivaei, Naveen A. Reddy, Charles C. Steidel +1 · 3 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Astronomy and Astrophysical Research #Astrophysics and Star Formation Studies #Flux (metallurgy) #Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena #Galaxy #Luminosity #Photometry (optics) #Population #Redshift #Star formation #Stellar mass #Stellar population #astro-ph.GA
paper · pdf · doi:10.1088/0004-637x/804/2/149
published as ApJ 804 (2015) 149 · Accepted for publication in ApJ, 11 pages, 6 figures, 2 tables
arxiv created 2015/03/13 · openalex publication_date 2015/05/12 · arxiv updated 2015/05/14 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
We use a sample of 262 spectroscopically confirmed star-forming galaxies at redshifts to compare H α , ultraviolet (UV), and IR star formation rate (SFR) diagnostics and to investigate the dust properties of the galaxies. At these redshifts, the H α line shifts to the band. By comparing -band photometry to underlying stellar population model fits to other UV, optical, and near-infrared data, we infer the H α flux for each galaxy. We obtain the best agreement between H α - and UV-based SFRs if we assume that the ionized gas and stellar continuum are reddened by the same value and that the Calzetti attenuation curve is applied to both. Aided with MIPS 24 μ m data, we find that an attenuation curve steeper than the Calzetti curve is needed to reproduce the observed IR/UV ratios of galaxies younger than 100 Myr. Furthermore, using the bolometric SFR inferred from the UV and mid-IR data (SFR +SFR ), we calculated the conversion between the H α luminosity and SFR to be for a Salpeter initial mass function, which is consistent with the Kennicutt conversion. The derived conversion factor is independent of any assumption of the dust correction and is robust to stellar population model uncertainties.