Predicting Intrinsic mid-IR to optical flux ratios for galaxies of different types using Spectral Synthesis Models of Composite Stellar Populations
Abstract
We analyze the intrinsic flux ratios of simple and composite stellar populations for various visible--near-infrared filters with respect to ∼3.5μm (L-band), and their dependence on metallicity, star-formation history, and effective mean age. This study is motivated by the fact that light from galaxies is reddened and attenuated by dust via scattering and absorption, where different sightlines across the face of a galaxy suffer various amounts of extinction. Ignoring the effects of this extinction could lead one to infer lower stellar mass, and SFR, or higher metallicity. Tamura et al. (2009) developed an approximate method, dubbed the "βV" method, which corrects for dust-extinction on a pixel-by-pixel basis, by comparing the observed flux ratio and empirical estimate of the intrinsic flux ratio of optical and ∼3.5μm broadband data. Here, we aim to validate and test the limits of the βV method for various filters spanning the visible through near-infrared wavelength range. Through extensive modeling, we test their assumptions for the intrinsic flux ratios for a wide variety of simple and composite stellar populations. We build spectral energy distributions (SEDs) of simple stellar populations (SSPs), by adopting Starburst99 and BC03 models for young (<9Myr) and old (>100Myr) stellar populations, respectively, and linear combinations of these for intermediate ages. We then construct composite stellar population (CSP) SEDs by combining SSP SEDs for various realistic star-formation histories (SFHs). We convolve filter response curves of visible--near-infrared filters for HST imaging surveys and mid-infrared filters in current (WISE, Spitzer/IRAC) and near-future use (JWST/NIRCam) with each model SED, to obtain intrinsic flux ratios (βλ,0). We find that βNIR,0 is only varying slightly as a function of metallicity but is insensitive to SFH or redshift (z≤2). We also find a narrow range of βV,0 (0.7+0.05-0.08) for early Hubble type galaxies (E and S0) using SEDs of randomly generated multi-burst SFHs together with age and metallicity profiles of nearby galaxies from the literature.
- Publication:
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American Astronomical Society Meeting Abstracts #227
- Pub Date:
- January 2016
- Bibcode:
- 2016AAS...22734224K