The Impact of Inclination-dependent Attenuation on Ultraviolet Star Formation Rate Tracers
Abstract
We examine and quantify how hybrid (e.g., UV+IR) star formation rate (SFR) estimators and the A FUV-β relation depend on inclination for disk-dominated galaxies using spectral energy distribution modeling that utilizes the inclination-dependent attenuation curves described in Doore et al. We perform this analysis on a sample of 133 disk-dominated galaxies from the CANDELS fields and 18 disk galaxies from the Spitzer Infrared Nearby Galaxies Survey and Key Insights on Nearby Galaxies: A Far-Infrared Survey with Herschel samples. We find that both the hybrid SFR estimators and the A FUV-β relation present clear dependencies on inclination. To quantify this dependence in the hybrid SFR estimators, we derive an inclination and a far-UV-near-IR color-dependent parametric relation for converting observed UV and IR luminosities into SFRs. For the A FUV-β relation, we introduce an inclination-dependent component that accounts for the majority of the inclination dependence with the scatter of the relation increasing with inclination. We then compare both of these inclination-dependent relations to similar inclination-independent relations found in the literature. From this comparison, we find that the UV+IR correction factor and A FUV for our hybrid and A FUV-β relations, respectively, result in a reduction in the residual scatter of our sample by approximately a factor of 2. Therefore, we demonstrate that inclination must be considered in hybrid SFR estimators and the A FUV-β relation to produce more accurate SFR estimates in disk-dominated galaxies.
- Publication:
-
The Astrophysical Journal
- Pub Date:
- May 2022
- DOI:
- 10.3847/1538-4357/ac67e8
- arXiv:
- arXiv:2204.09580
- Bibcode:
- 2022ApJ...931...53D
- Keywords:
-
- Disk galaxies;
- Extragalactic astronomy;
- Galaxy properties;
- Star formation;
- Spectral energy distribution;
- 391;
- 506;
- 615;
- 1569;
- 2129;
- Astrophysics - Astrophysics of Galaxies
- E-Print:
- 24 pages, 15 figures. 23 page body and 1 page appendix. Updated with published version