Empirical determination of the shape of dust attenuation curves in star-forming galaxies

Wild, Vivienne; Charlot, S.; Brinchmann, Jarle; Heckman, Timothy M.; Vince, O.; Pacifici, Camilla; Chevallard, Jacopo

doi:10.1111/j.1365-2966.2011.19367.x

Cited by 225 publications

(441 citation statements)

References 78 publications

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“…7 can be explained by the mixing of transparent and opaque regions. In their comparison between galaxy-wide SEDs in Wild et al (2011) find extinction laws very similar to the Milky Way one. The measured dust reddening in this case is dominated by the optically thin parts of the galaxy discs; the reddening of the observed light is accurately retrieved but the total light absorption is not (as opaque regions are effectively not included).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The distribution of interstellar dust in spiral galaxies is still a dominant unknown in many areas of extra-galactic astrophysics, e.g., models of the spectral energy distribution (SED) of spiral galaxies (e.g., Popescu et al 2000;Popescu & Tuffs 2005;Pierini et al 2004;Baes et al 2003Baes et al , 2010Bianchi et al 2000;Bianchi 2007Bianchi , 2008Driver et al 2008;Jonsson et al 2010;Wild et al 2011;Holwerda et al 2012a;Verstappen et al, in prep. ;Holwerda et al, in prep.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The occulting galaxy pair UGC 3995

Holwerda

Keel

2013

A&A

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UGC 3995 is an interacting and occulting galaxy pair. UGC 3995B is a foreground face-on spiral and UGC 3995A a bright background spiral with an AGN. We present analysis of the dust in the disc of UGC 3995B based on archival Hubble Space Telescope (HST) WFPC2 and PPAK IFU data from the CALIFA survey's first data release. From the HST F606W image, we construct an extinction map by modeling the isophotes of the background galaxy UGC 3995A and the resulting transmission through UGC 3995B. This extinction map of UGC 3995B shows several distinct spiral extinction features. The radial distribution of A V values declines slowly with peaks corresponding to the spiral structures. The distribution of A V values in the HST extinction map peaks near A V = 0.3-0.4. Beyond this point, the distribution of A V values drops like an exponential:The 0.5 value is higher than typical for a spiral galaxy. The outer arms may be tidally distended; the extinction in the corresponding interarm regions is small to an unusually small radius. To analyze the PPAK IFU data, we take the ratio of a fibre spectrum in the overlap region and the corresponding background fiber spectrum to construct an extinction curve. We fit the Cardelli, Clayton and Mathis (CCM) curve to the extinction curve of each fiber element in the overlap region. A map of the extinction constructed from PPEX IFU data-cubes shows the same spiral structure of the HST extinction map but the some differences in the distribution of the normalization of the CCM fits (A V ). The inferred extinction slopes (R V ) maps do not display any structure and a range of values partly due to the sampling effects of the disc by fibers, sometimes due to bad fits, and possibly partly due to some reprocessing of dust grains in the interacting disc. We compare these findings to our other analysis of an occulting pair with HST and IFU data. In both cases the canonical R V = 3.1 is not recovered even though there is enough signal in the extinction curve. We attribute this to mixing opaque and more transparent sections of the disc in each resolution element (∼3 or 0.9 kpc). To illustrate the difficulty of imposing a R V = 3.1 law over a section of a spiral disc, we average all spectra and show how a fully gray extinction curve is recovered.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The occulting galaxy pair UGC 3995

Holwerda

Keel

2013

A&A

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“…For completeness we note that several recent studies of larger galaxy samples at both low and high redshift have found the law to be a poor description for dust attenuation at UV wavelengths (e.g. Noll et al 2009;Conroy et al 2010;Wild et al 2011;Buat et al 2011aBuat et al ,b, 2012Lee et al 2012;Reddy et al 2012). However, despite this and despite its non-physical set-up, the ease of use of the Calzetti et al (2000) law has made it a popular choice in observational analyses.…”

Section: The Calzetti Et Al (2000) Lawmentioning

confidence: 99%

Predicting Hα emission-line galaxy counts for future galaxy redshift surveys

Merson

Wang

Benson

et al. 2017

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

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Knowledge of the number density of Hα emitting galaxies is vital for assessing the scientific impact of the Euclid and WFIRST missions. In this work we present predictions from a galaxy formation model, GALACTICUS, for the cumulative number counts of Hα-emitting galaxies. We couple GALACTICUS to three different dust attenuation methods and examine the counts using each method. A χ 2 minimisation approach is used to compare the model predictions to observed galaxy counts and calibrate the dust parameters. We find that weak dust attenuation is required for the GALACTICUS counts to be broadly consistent with the observations, though the optimum dust parameters return large values for χ 2 , suggesting that further calibration of GALACTICUS is necessary. The model predictions are also consistent with observed estimates for the optical depth and the Hα luminosity function. Finally we present forecasts for the redshift distributions and number counts for two Euclid-like and one WFIRST-like survey. For a Euclid-like survey with redshift range 0.9 z 1.8 and Hα + [NII] blended flux limit of 2 × 10 −16 erg s −1 cm −2 we predict a number density between 3900-4800 galaxies per square degree. For a WFIRST-like survey with redshift range 1 z 2 and blended flux limit of 1 × 10 −16 erg s −1 cm −2 we predict a number density between 10400-15200 galaxies per square degree.

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“…With the metallicity of M 51 being solar to even super-solar locally, we would expect a prominent 2175 Å absorption feature if the metallicity plays a role in shaping the dust composition, and, thus, the shape of the attenuation curve. Other than metallicity, the absorption bump at 2175 Å appears to be sensitive to the UV radiation field (e.g., Wild et al 2011), which can alter the dust grain size distribution through destruction/coagulation processes, and/or change the ionization state of dust grains (Boulanger et al 1988;Cesarsky et al 1996). Also radiative transfer effects coupled with age-selective attenuation have been shown to affect the bump strength (Silva et al 1998;Granato et al 2000).…”

Section: Rt Model Validationmentioning

confidence: 99%

High-resolution, 3D radiative transfer modeling

Looze

Fritz

Baes

et al. 2014

A&A

100

114

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Context. Dust reprocesses about half of the stellar radiation in galaxies. The thermal re-emission by dust of absorbed energy is considered to be driven merely by young stars so is often applied to tracing the star formation rate in galaxies. Recent studies have argued that the old stellar population might be responsible for a non-negligible fraction of the radiative dust heating. Aims. In this work, we aim to analyze the contribution of young ( < ∼ 100 Myr) and old (∼10 Gyr) stellar populations to radiative dust heating processes in the nearby grand-design spiral galaxy M 51 using radiative transfer modeling. High-resolution 3D radiative transfer (RT) models are required to describe the complex morphologies of asymmetric spiral arms and clumpy star-forming regions and to model the propagation of light through a dusty medium. Methods. In this paper, we present a new technique developed to model the radiative transfer effects in nearby face-on galaxies. We construct a high-resolution 3D radiative transfer model with the Monte-Carlo code SKIRT to account for the absorption, scattering, and non-local thermal equilibrium (NLTE) emission of dust in M 51. The 3D distribution of stars is derived from the 2D morphology observed in the IRAC 3.6 µm, GALEX FUV, Hα, and MIPS 24 µm wavebands, assuming an exponential vertical distribution with an appropriate scale height. The dust geometry is constrained through the far-ultraviolet (FUV) attenuation, which is derived from the observed total-infrared-to-far-ultraviolet luminosity ratio. The stellar luminosity, star formation rate, and dust mass have been scaled to reproduce the observed stellar spectral energy distribution (SED), FUV attenuation, and infrared SED. Results. The dust emission derived from RT calculations is consistent with far-infrared and submillimeter observations of M 51, implying that the absorbed stellar energy is balanced by the thermal re-emission of dust. The young stars provide 63% of the energy for heating the dust responsible for the total infrared emission (8−1000 µm), while 37% of the dust emission is governed through heating by the evolved stellar population. In individual wavebands, the contribution from young stars to the dust heating dominates at all infrared wavebands but gradually decreases towards longer infrared and submillimeter wavebands for which the old stellar population becomes a non-negligible source of heating. Upon extrapolation of the results for M 51, we present prescriptions for estimating the contribution of young stars to the global dust heating based on a tight correlation between the dust heating fraction and specific star formation rate.

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Empirical determination of the shape of dust attenuation curves in star-forming galaxies

Cited by 225 publications

References 78 publications

The occulting galaxy pair UGC 3995

The occulting galaxy pair UGC 3995

Predicting Hα emission-line galaxy counts for future galaxy redshift surveys

High-resolution, 3D radiative transfer modeling

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