Radial Variation of Attenuation and Star Formation in the Largest Late-Type Disks Observed with GALEX

By S. Boissier, A. Gil de Paz, A. Boselli, B. Madore, V. Buat, L. Cortese, D. Burgarella, J. Carlos, Muñoz Mateos, T. Barlow and 18 more. 2006

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For a sample of 43 nearby, late-type galaxies, we have investigated the radial variation of both the current star formation rate and the dust-induced UV light attenuation. To do this we have cross-correlated IRAS images and GALEX observations for each of these galaxies and compiled observations of the gas (CO and H I) and metal-abundance gradients found in the literature. We find that attenuation correlates with metallicity. We then use the UV profiles, corrected for attenuation, to study several variants of the Schmidt law and conclude that our results are compatible with a simple law similar to the one of Kennicutt extending smoothly to lower surface densities, but with considerable scatter. We do not detect an abrupt break in the UV light at the threshold radius derived from Hα data (at which the Hα profile shows a break and beyond which only a few H II regions are usually found). We interpret the Hα sudden break not as a change in the star formation regime (as often suggested), but as the vanishingly small number of ionizing stars corresponding to low levels of star formation.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

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EXTREMELY INEFFICIENT STAR FORMATION IN THE OUTER DISKS OF NEARBY GALAXIES (2010, background): “This agrees with numerous recent studies that have failed to detect such a feature using UV data (e.g., Boissier et al. 2007; Thilker et al. 2005; Hunter et al. 2010; Gil de Paz et al. 2005, 2007b), but is in contrast to the radial cutoffs found in Hα emission (e.g., Kennicutt 1989; Martin &…”
DUST-CORRECTED STAR FORMATION RATES OF GALAXIES. II. COMBINATIONS OF ULTRAVIOLET AND INFRARED TRACERS (2011, unknown): “…Meurer et al. 1999; Buat et al. 1999; Gordon et al. 2000; Bell 2002; Kong et al. 2004; Calzetti et al. 2005; Seibert et al. 2005; Cortese et al. 2006; Boissier et al. 2007; Gil de Paz et al. 2007; Johnson et al. 2007a,2007b; Panuzzo et al. 2007; Salim et al. 2007,2009; Treyer et al. 2007;…”
COMPARISON OF Hα AND UV STAR FORMATION RATES IN THE LOCAL VOLUME: SYSTEMATIC DISCREPANCIES FOR DWARF GALAXIES (2009, background): “Such statistical effects on the Hα luminosity has been previously explored for example by Boissier et al. (2007) and Thilker et al. (2007) in the context of extended UV disks.”
REGULATION OF STAR FORMATION RATES IN MULTIPHASE GALACTIC DISKS: A THERMAL/DYNAMICAL EQUILIBRIUM MODEL (2010, background): “First, it is evident that star formation does not have a sharp cutoff in the outer disk, but instead the rate gradually declines with R and Σs (see also the GALEX observations of Boissier et al. 2007).”
A Search for Extended Ultraviolet Disk (XUV-Disk) Galaxies in the Local Universe (2007, methodology): “Boissier et al. (2007) demonstrate that for the galaxies of Martin & Kennicutt (2001) showing a sharp azimuthally drop (in Hα) attributed to a SF threshold mechanism, typical µUV are near our fiducial level when evaluated at the Hα “edge” – even if the edge is merely a consequence of “missing” the…”
GOODS-Herschel: dust attenuation properties of UV selected high redshift galaxies (2012, background): “Although the situation is more complex for non-starbursting galaxies (e.g. Burgarella et al., 2005; Boissier et al., 2007; Hao et al., 2011; Boquien et al., 2012, and references therein), this relation seems to hold for high-redshift systems forming stars intensively, such as Lyman break or BzK…”
THE SPITZER LOCAL VOLUME LEGACY: SURVEY DESCRIPTION AND INFRARED PHOTOMETRY (2009, background): “…infraredto-ultraviolet ratios, and show significantly larger scatter (Buat et al. 2002, 2005; Bell 2002; Kong et al. 2004; Gordon et al. 2004; Burgarella et al. 2005; Calzetti et al. 2005; Seibert et al. 2005; Cortese et al. 2006; Boissier et al. 2007; Gil de Paz et al. 2007; Dale et al. 2007).”
THE SPATIALLY RESOLVED STAR FORMATION LAW FROM INTEGRAL FIELD SPECTROSCOPY: VIRUS-P OBSERVATIONS OF NGC 5194 (2009, background): “…of widespread UV emission beyond the Hα brightness profile cutoff in the outer disks of many nearby galaxies (Gil de Paz et al. 2005; Thilker et al. 2005; Boissier et al. 2007) , has raised questions about the proportionality between the Hα emission and the SFR in the low star-formation regime.”
The big problems in star formation: The star formation rate, stellar clustering, and the initial mass function (2014, background): “…with low total or areal star formation rates show systematic deficiencies in the amount of Hα they produce per unit far ultraviolet (FUV) emission (Boissier et al. 2007; Lee et al. 2009; Boselli et al. 2009; Meurer et al. 2009), and systematically low Hα equivalent widths (Hoversten & Glazebrook…”
Molecular Hydrogen and Global Star Formation Relations in Galaxies (2007, background): “While the slope of the spatially-resolved molecular gas SK relation is consistently measured to benmol ≈ 1.4 in the same systems, with a two-sigma variation ofnmol ∼ 1.2− 1.7 (Wong & Blitz 2002; Boissier et al. 2003; Heyer et al. 2004; Boissier et al. 2007; Kennicutt et al. 2007).”
The stellar and sub-stellar IMF of simple and composite populations (2011, unknown): “This local IGIMF (LIGIMF) theory (Pflamm-Altenburg & Kroupa 2008) readily explains the observed radial Hα cut-off in disk galaxies as well as the different radial profiles in Hα and FUV observed by Boissier et al. (2007).”
Modelling the spectral energy distribution of galaxies - V. The dust and PAH emission SEDs of disk galaxies (2010, background): “From resolved studies of galaxies it was also found that there is a large scale distributionof diffuse dust having a face-on opacity that decreases with radius (Boissier et al. 2004, Popescu et al. 2005, Pérez-González et al. 2006, Boissier et al. 2007, Muñoz-Mateos et al. 2009).”
Multiple minor mergers: formation of elliptical galaxies and constraints for the growth of spiral disks (2007, methodology): “We chose β = 1.5, as suggested by the observational results of Kennicutt (1998) (see also Boissier et al. 2006).”
UV Star Formation Rates in the Local Universe (2007, unknown): “IRX-β relationship fornormalgalaxies, such as those in our sample, has been previously studied withGALEXdata by Seibert et al. (2005); Cortese et al. (2006); Gil de Paz et al. (2007); Boissier et al. (2007); Panuzzo et al. (2007).”
RADIAL DISTRIBUTION OF STARS, GAS, AND DUST IN SINGS GALAXIES. II. DERIVED DUST PROPERTIES (2009, methodology): “Note that our fit differs from the one derived by Boissier et al. (2007) from GALEX and IRAS data, the latter having a somewhat flatter slope at the reddest UV colors, possibly due to data-points embedded within the bulges (no conditions on the UV color were imposed when computing that fit).”