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- Title
Star-formation histories of local luminous infrared galaxies.
- Authors
Pereira-Santaella, Miguel; Alonso-Herrero, Almudena; Colina, Luis; Miralles-Caballero, Daniel; Pérez-González, Pablo G.; Arribas, Santiago; Bellocchi, Enrica; Cazzoli, Sara; Díaz-Santos, Tanio; López, Javier Piqueras
- Abstract
We present analysis of the integrated spectral energy distribution (SED) from the ultraviolet (UV) to the far-infrared and Hα of a sample of 29 local systems and individual galaxies with infrared (IR) luminosities between 1011 L☉ and 1011.8 L☉. We combined new narrow-band Hα + [N II] and broad-band g, r optical imaging taken with the Nordic Optical Telescope (NOT), with archival GALEX, 2MASS, Spitzer, and Herschel data. Their SEDs (photometry and integrated Hα flux) were fitted simultaneously with a modified version of the magphys code using stellar population synthesis models for the UV-near-IR range and thermal emission models for the IR emission taking the energy balance between the absorbed and re-emitted radiation into account. From the SED fits, we derive the star-formation histories (SFH) of these galaxies. For nearly half of them, the star-formation rate appears to be approximately constant during the last few Gyr. In the other half, the current star-formation rate seems to be enhanced by a factor of 3-20 with respect to what occurred ~1Gyr ago. Objects with constant SFH tend to be more massive than starbursts, and they are compatible with the expected properties of a main-sequence (M-S) galaxy. Likewise, the derived SFHs show that all our objects were M-S galaxies ~1Gyr ago with stellar masses between 1010.1 and 1011.5 M☉. We also derived the average extinction (Av = 0.6-3mag) and the polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon luminosity to LIR ratio (0.03-0.16) from our fits. We combined the Av with the total IR and Hα luminosities into a diagram that can be used to identify objects with rapidly changing (increasing or decreasing) SFR during the past 100 Myr.
- Subjects
STAR formation; STARBURSTS; GALACTIC evolution; SPECTRAL energy distribution; INFRARED astronomy
- Publication
Astronomy & Astrophysics / Astronomie et Astrophysique, 2015, Vol 577, p1
- ISSN
0004-6361
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1051/0004-6361/201425359