Combining physical galaxy models with radio observations to constrain the SFRs of high-z dusty star-forming galaxies
Date Issued
2015
Author(s)
Abstract
We complement our previous analysis of a sample of z ∼ 1-2 luminous and ultraluminous infrared galaxies [(U)LIRGs], by adding deep Very Large Array radio observations at 1.4 GHz to a large data set from the far-UV to the submillimetre, including Spitzer and Herschel data. Given the relatively small number of (U)LIRGs in our sample with high signal-to-noise (S/N) radio data, and to extend our study to a different family of galaxies, we also include six well-sampled near-infrared (near-IR)-selected BzK galaxies at z ∼ 1.5. From our analysis based on the radtran spectral synthesis code GRASIL, we find that, while the IR luminosity may be a biased tracer of the star formation rate (SFR) depending on the age of stars dominating the dust heating, the inclusion of the radio flux offers significantly tighter constraints on SFR. Our predicted SFRs are in good agreement with the estimates based on rest-frame radio luminosity and the Bell calibration. The extensive spectrophotometric coverage of our sample allows us to set important constraints on the star formation (SF) history of individual objects. For essentially all galaxies, we find evidence for a rather continuous SFR and a peak epoch of SF preceding that of the observation by a few Gyr. This seems to correspond to a formation redshift of z ∼ 5-6. We finally show that our physical analysis may affect the interpretation of the SFR-M⋆ diagram, by possibly shifting, with respect to previous works, the position of the most dust obscured objects to higher M⋆ and lower SFRs.
Volume
447
Issue
4
Start page
3442
Issn Identifier
0035-8711
Ads BibCode
2015MNRAS.447.3442L
Rights
open.access
File(s)![Thumbnail Image]()
Loading...
Name
LSilva2015MNRAS447.3442.pdf
Description
pdf editoriale
Size
4.18 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
d2245e83915d3342949f5eff550021e5