DUST ATTENUATION IN UV-SELECTED STARBURSTS AT HIGH REDSHIFT AND THEIR LOCAL COUNTERPARTS: IMPLICATIONS FOR THE COSMIC STAR FORMATION RATE DENSITY

Journal Article · Sat Jan 01 04:00:00 EST 2011 · Astrophysical Journal Letters

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1088/2041-8205/726/1/L7· OSTI ID:21560590

Overzier, Roderik A; Jing, Wang ^[1]; Heckman, Timothy M ^[2]; Armus, Lee; Howell, Justin ^[3]; Buat, Veronique ^[4]; Meurer, Gerhardt ^[5]; Seibert, Mark ^[6]; Siana, Brian; Goncalves, Thiago S; Martin, D Christopher; Neill, James D ^[7]; Basu-Zych, Antara ^[8]; Charlot, Stephane ^[9]; Rich, R Michael ^[10]; Salim, Samir ^[11]; Schiminovich, David ^[12]

---

1. Max-Planck-Institut for Astrophysics, D-85748 Garching (Germany)
2. Department of Physics and Astronomy, Johns Hopkins University, 3400 North Charles Street, Baltimore, MD 21218 (United States)
3. Spitzer Science Center, Caltech, MS 220-6, Pasadena, CA 91125 (United States)
4. Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Marseille, OAMP, Universite Aix-marseille, CNRS, 38 rue Frederic Joliot-Curie, 13388 Marseille Cedex 13 (France)
5. ICRAR/University of Western Australia, 35 Stirling Highway, Crawley, WA 6009 (Australia)
6. Observatories of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, 813 Santa Barbara Street, Pasadena, CA 91101 (United States)
7. California Institute of Technology, MS 249-17, Pasadena, CA 91125 (United States)
8. NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Laboratory for X-ray Astrophysics, Greenbelt, MD 20771 (United States)
9. PMC Univ Paris 06, UMR7095, Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris, F-75014 Paris (France)
10. Department of Physics and Astronomy, Division of Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1562 (United States)
11. National Optical Astronomical Observatories, 950 N. Cherry Avenue, Tucson, AZ 85719 (United States)
12. Department of Astronomy, Columbia University, MC 2457, 550 West 120th Street, New York, NY 10027 (United States)

We present a new analysis of the dust obscuration in starburst galaxies at low and high redshifts. This study is motivated by our unique sample of the most extreme UV-selected starburst galaxies in the nearby universe (z < 0.3), found to be good analogs of high-redshift Lyman break galaxies (LBGs) in most of their physical properties. We find that the dust properties of the Lyman break analogs (LBAs) are consistent with the relation derived previously by Meurer et al. (M99) that is commonly used to dust-correct star formation rate (SFR) measurements at a very wide range of redshifts. We directly compare our results with high-redshift samples (LBGs, 'BzK', and submillimeter galaxies at z {approx} 2-3) having IR data either from Spitzer or Herschel. The attenuation in typical LBGs at z {approx} 2-3 and LBAs is very similar. Because LBAs are much better analogs to LBGs compared to previous local star-forming samples, including M99, the practice of dust-correcting the SFRs of high-redshift galaxies based on the local calibration is now placed on a much more solid ground. We illustrate the importance of this result by showing how the locally calibrated relation between UV measurements and extinction is used to estimate the integrated, dust-corrected SFR density at z {approx_equal} 2-6.

• OSTI ID: 21560590
• Journal Information: Astrophysical Journal Letters, Journal Name: Astrophysical Journal Letters Journal Issue: 1 Vol. 726; ISSN 2041-8205
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS
ATTENUATION
DENSITY
DUSTS
ELECTROMAGNETIC RADIATION
EVOLUTION
GALAXIES
PHYSICAL PROPERTIES
RADIATIONS
RED SHIFT
STAR EVOLUTION
ULTRAVIOLET RADIATION