Modeling the Panchromatic Spectral Energy Distributions of Galaxies

By C. Conroy. 2013

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The spectral energy distributions (SEDs) of galaxies are shaped by nearly every physical property of the system, including the star-formation history, metal content, abundance pattern, dust mass, grain size distribution, star-dust geometry, and interstellar radiation field. The principal goal of stellar population synthesis (SPS) is to extract these variables from observed SEDs. In this review I provide an overview of the SPS technique and discuss what can be reliably measured from galaxy SEDs. Topics include stellar masses, star-formation rates and histories, metallicities and abundance patterns, dust properties, and the stellar initial mass function.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/22cb4b8a2db945d5bc95a0ee6c966f9b44a785a0

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Citations in the corpus

THE DUST ATTENUATION LAW IN DISTANT GALAXIES: EVIDENCE FOR VARIATION WITH SPECTRAL TYPE (2013, result): “See Conroy (2013) for more discussion on the proposed explanations Our values for Eb and δ are in the same range to those found by Buat et al. (2012), who fit the photometry of individual galaxies in the GOODS-S field.”
The Evolution of Galaxy Structure Over Cosmic Time (2014, background): “For nearby galaxy’s a few recent relevant reviews are Blanton & Moustakas (2009), van der Kruit & Freeman (2011), and Conroy (2013).”
Constraining the thermally pulsing asymptotic giant branch phase with resolved stellar populations in the Large Magellanic Cloud (2019, background): “…Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society nras/article-abstract/485/4/5666/5382498 by Belgian R oyal O bservatory user on 29 April 2019 energy distribution (SED) of galaxies to dust production in galaxies at low and high redshift (Maraston et al. 2006; Conroy 2013; Zibetti et al. 2013).”
De re metallica: the cosmic chemical evolution of galaxies (2018, neutral): “…& Charlot, 2003; Conroy et al., 2009; Leitherer, 2014; Chevallard & Charlot, 2016; Wilkinson et al., 2017; Cappellari, 2017, among many others), see Conroy (2013) for a recent review, and http://www.sedfitting.org (by 10 Maiolino R., Mannucci F. T. Budavari, D. Dale, B. Groves and J. Walcher) for…”
Constraining the galaxy–halo connection over the last 13.3 Gyr: star formation histories, galaxy mergers and structural properties (2017, methodology): “In order to characterize the growth of dark matter halos RodŕıguezPuebla et al. (2016a) used the fitting function from Behroozi, Wechsler & Conroy (2013b) Mvir(Mvir,0, z) = M13(z)10 f(Mvir,0,z) (B14) where M13(z) = 10 13.6h−1M (1+z) 2.755(1+ z 2 )−6.351 exp (−0.413z)(B15) f(Mvir, z) = log ( Mvir,0…”
Nuclear star clusters (2009, background): “Even with high quality spectra or multi-band images, there are many challenges and limitations associated with stellar population modeling, which have been extensively discussed recently by Conroy (2013).”
The star formation history of CALIFA galaxies: Radial structures (2013, background): “…combination of an initial mass function (IMF) with stellar isochrones and libraries that provide the spectra of stars with temperature, gravity and metallicity demanded by the evolutionary tracks (e.g., Tinsley 1980; Bruzual & Charlot 1993; Leitherer et al. 1999; Walcher et al. 2011; Conroy 2013).”
Dusty Star Forming Galaxies at High Redshift (2014, methodology): “SPS calculations are recently reviewed by Conroy (2013), and we refer the reader to that review for a more thorough discussion of uncertainties in population synthesis calculations.”
GALEX–SDSS–WISE LEGACY CATALOG (GSWLC): STAR FORMATION RATES, STELLAR MASSES, AND DUST ATTENUATIONS OF 700,000 LOW-REDSHIFT GALAXIES (2016, methodology): “A more flexible and comprehensive approach is to derive physical parameters through SED fitting (see Walcher et al. 2011; Conroy 2013 for overview).”
Toward a Better Understanding of Cosmic Chronometers: A New Measurement of H(z) at z ∼ 0.7 (2021, background): “…spectroscopic observations), age-dating galaxies is challenged by the complex reconstruction of their star formation history (SFH) and by intrinsic degeneracies within stellar population parameters (e.g., stellar age, formation timescale, and chemical composition, see Conroy 2013). ar X iv :2 11 0.”
Mapping stellar content to dark matter haloes using galaxy clustering and galaxy–galaxy lensing in the SDSS DR7 (2015, methodology): “…predicting the M∗/L, due to the choice of the SPS model, dust extinction law, stellar evolution model, and most importantly, the form of the IMF (see Conroy 2013 for a general review on these topics and L12 for a detailed discussion of the various systematic uncertainties in stellar mass…”
THE UNIVERSAL RELATION OF GALACTIC CHEMICAL EVOLUTION: THE ORIGIN OF THE MASS–METALLICITY RELATION (2014, methodology): “The absolute uncertainty in stellar mass is ∼ 0.3 dex (Conroy 2013).”
Stellar Mass—Halo Mass Relation and Star Formation Efficiency in High-Mass Halos (2014, background): “We note that the current statistical uncertainties for mass-to-light ratios derived by both dynamical and stellar population synthesis (SPS) techniques are substantial (& 0.1 dex, Bell & de Jong 2001; Bell et al. 2003; Cappellari et al. 2006; Zibetti et al. 2009; Conroy 2013).”
EARLY-TYPE GALAXY ARCHEOLOGY: AGES, ABUNDANCE RATIOS, AND EFFECTIVE TEMPERATURES FROM FULL-SPECTRUM FITTING (2013, background): “It has long been appreciated that optical through nearinfrared (NIR) spectra of old stellar systems are rich in absorption features that provide clues to the ages, metalliciies, and abundance patterns of the stars (for a review, see Conroy 2013).”
How to Measure Galaxy Star Formation Histories. II. Nonparametric Models (2018, methodology): “These models have typically been reserved for very high-quality data as galaxy observations are only typically only weakly informative about stellar age (e.g., Conroy 2013).”
The COSMOS2015 galaxy stellar mass function . Thirteen billion years of stellar mass assembly in ten snapshots (2017, background): “…galaxies’ spectral energy distribution (SED), may cause systematics in their redshift distribution, or in following steps of the analysis, such as the evaluation of stellar mass (for a comparison among various SED fitting code, we refer to Conroy 2013; Mitchell et al. 2013; Mobasher et al. 2015).”
Improving the full spectrum fitting method: accurate convolution with Gauss-Hermite functions (2016, background): “This expression is straightforwardly generalized in ppxf to study the distribution of more parameters, like e.g. metallicity, α enhancement or IMF, in addition to the SFR (e.g. Conroy 2013, §2.3).”
MOSFIRE Spectroscopy of Quiescent Galaxies at 1.5 < z < 2.5. II. Star Formation Histories and Galaxy Quenching (2018, methodology): “A powerful method to study the past evolution of massive quiescent galaxies is the reconstruction of their star formation history (SFH), which can be done by fitting models to the observed spectral energy distribution (SED) or, when available, spectroscopy (see, e.g., Renzini 2006; Conroy 2013).”
Structure and Kinematics of Early-Type Galaxies from Integral Field Spectroscopy (2016, background): “…• Structure of early-type galaxies 29 In recent times, thanks to the availability of high-quality stellar population models (see Conroy 2013, for a review) with high spectral resolution based on large empirical spectral libraries (Bruzual & Charlot 2003; Vazdekis et al. 2012;…”