2010/07/22 by G. E. Magdis, D. Elbaz, H. S. Hwang +34 · 39 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Astronomy and Astrophysical Research #Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena #Galaxy #Infrared #Luminosity #Luminous infrared galaxy #Population #Radio Astronomy Observations and Technology #astro-ph.CO
paper · pdf · doi:10.1088/2041-8205/720/2/l185
published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters 720(2), L185-L189 (IOP Publishing) · Accepted for publication at ApJL
arxiv created 2010/07/22 · openalex publication_date 2010/08/20 · arxiv updated 2015/05/19 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
We present first insights into the far-IR properties for a sample of IRAC and MIPS 24 μm detected Lyman break galaxies (LBGs) at z ∼ 3, as derived from observations in the northern field of the Great Observatories Origins Survey (GOODS-N) carried out with the PACS instrument on board the Herschel Space Observatory . Although none of our galaxies are detected by Herschel , we employ a stacking technique to construct, for the first time, the average spectral energy distribution (SED) of infrared luminous LBGs from UV to radio wavelengths. We derive a median IR luminosity of L IR = 1.6 × 10 12 L ☉ , placing the population in the class of ultra-luminous infrared galaxies (ULIRGs). Complementing our study with existing multi-wavelength data, we put constraints on the dust temperature of the population and find that for their L IR , MIPS-LBGs are warmer than submillimeter-luminous galaxies while they fall in the locus of the L IR – T d relation of the local ULIRGs. This, along with estimates based on the average SED, explains the marginal detection of LBGs in current submillimeter surveys and suggests that these latter studies introduce a bias toward the detection of colder ULIRGs in the high- z universe, while missing high- z ULIRGS with warmer dust.