[O II] as a Star Formation Rate Indicator

By Lisa J. Kewley, Margaret J. Geller, R. Jansen. 2004

334 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We investigate the [O II] emission line as a star formation rate (SFR) indicator using integrated spectra of 97 galaxies from the Nearby Field Galaxies Survey (NFGS). The sample includes all Hubble types and contains SFRs ranging from 0.01 to 100 M⊙ yr-1. We compare the Kennicutt [O II] and Hα SFR calibrations and show that there are two significant effects that produce disagreement between SFR([O II]) and SFR(Hα): reddening and metallicity. Differences in the ionization state of the interstellar medium do not contribute significantly to the observed difference between SFR([O II]) and SFR(Hα) for the NFGS galaxies with metallicities log (O/H) + 12 ≳ 8.5. The Kennicutt [O II]-SFR relation assumes a typical reddening for nearby galaxies; in practice, the reddening differs significantly from sample to sample. We derive a new SFR([O II]) calibration that does not contain a reddening assumption. Our new SFR([O II]) calibration also provides an optional correction for metallicity. Our SFRs derived from [O II] agree with those derived from Hα to within 0.03–0.05 dex. We show that the reddening, E(B-V), increases with intrinsic (i.e., reddening-corrected) [O II] luminosity for the NFGS sample. We apply our SFR([O II]) calibration with metallicity correction to two samples: high-redshift 0.8 < z < 1.6 galaxies from the NICMOS Hα survey and 0.5 < z < 1.1 galaxies from the Canada-France Redshift Survey. The SFR([O II]) and SFR(Hα) for these samples agree to within the scatter observed for the NFGS sample, indicating that our SFR([O II]) relation can be applied to both local and high-z galaxies. Finally, we apply our SFR([O II]) to estimates of the cosmic star formation history. After reddening and metallicity corrections, the star formation rate densities derived from [O II] and Hα agree to within ∼30%.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/6f3ea871cc6d5a75ca8f442802cdcbca75e770ff

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Citations in the corpus

CAIRNS: The Cluster and Infall Region Nearby Survey. I. Redshifts and Mass Profiles (2003, background): “Hα is 1 relatively insensitive to metallicity, unlike some star formation tracers including [Oii] (Kewley et al. 2004).”
Analysis of galaxy spectral energy distributions from far-UV to far-IR with CIGALE: studying a SINGS test sample (2009, background): “They are based on Hα emission, which is a thoroughly studied and relatively reliable SFR indicator (see, e.g., Kennicutt 1998; Brinchmann et al. 2004; Kewley et al. 2004; Calzetti et al. 2007).”
Spitzer Quasar and ULIRG Evolution Study (QUEST). I. The Origin of the Far-Infrared Continuum of QSOs (2006, methodology): “Kewley et al. (2004) base their work on a sample of nearby field galaxies with detailed integrated optical spectroscopy, and star formation rates spanning 4 orders of magnitude centered on 1 M yr 1.”
Star Formation in the Milky Way and Nearby Galaxies (2012, positive): “K98 published a single SFR calibration for the line, but subsequent analyses (e.g., Jansen et al. 2001; Kewley et al. 2004; Moustakas et al. 2006) have shown that the systematic effects must be removed or at least calibrated to first order for reliable measurements.”
The K20 survey. VII. The spectroscopic catalogue: spectral properties and evolution of the galaxy population ⋆, ⋆⋆ (2005, background): “These differences in the average ratio between EW([OII]) and EW(Hα) can be ascribed to variations in metallicity or ionization state (see Kewley et al. 2004).”
ONGOING AND CO-EVOLVING STAR FORMATION IN zCOSMOS GALAXIES HOSTING ACTIVE GALACTIC NUCLEI (2008, methodology): “Here, we use the calibration of Kewley et al. (2004) to derive SFRs28 in order to have consistency with the SFRs measured for the type 1 SDSS sample (Kim et al. 2006).”
A POPULATION OF MASSIVE, LUMINOUS GALAXIES HOSTING HEAVILY DUST-OBSCURED GAMMA-RAY BURSTS: IMPLICATIONS FOR THE USE OF GRBs AS TRACERS OF COSMIC STAR FORMATION (2013, methodology): “Major UV/optical nebular emission lines are included, calculated from the SFR and metallicity following the prescriptions of Kennicutt (1998), Kewley & Dopita (2002), and Kewley et al. (2004), since in some cases these can contribute substantial flux even to broad-band filters.”
Bimodal gas accretion in the Horizon–MareNostrum galaxy formation simulation (2008, methodology): “Once the red and blue galaxy groups are defined (through the colour or SFR criterion), the authors compute the mass functions of the blue and red groups and the contribution of blue and red galaxies to the total mass function.”
Binary Population and Spectral Synthesis Version 2.1: Construction, Observational Verification, and New Results (2017, background): “The response of diffuse interstellar, or even intergalactic, gas to stellar radiation, together with its reprocessing and emission as nebular lines, is a complex topic which has been explored in detail by other authors (e.g. Ferland et al. 1998; Kewley et al. 2004) and in Section 6.3.”
THEORETICAL EVOLUTION OF OPTICAL STRONG LINES ACROSS COSMIC TIME (2013, methodology): “The narrowline region surrounding an AGN is typically 1-5 kpc (Bennert et al. 2006), smaller than the typical radius sampled by global spectra of local pure star-forming galaxies (∼ 8 kpc on average; Kewley et al. 2004).”
On the Origin of [O II] Emission in Red-Sequence and Poststarburst Galaxies (2005, methodology): “Avariety of calibrations have been developed (Kennicutt 1992, 1998; Kewley et al. 2004; Mouhcine et al. 2005; Moustakas et al. 2005), enabling SFR estimates from [O ii] to a reasonable accuracy for star-forming galaxies.”
THE HOST GALAXIES OF GAMMA-RAY BURSTS. II. A MASS–METALLICITY RELATION FOR LONG-DURATION GAMMA-RAY BURST HOST GALAXIES (2010, methodology): “For the remainder of our hosts, where Hα fluxes were not available, we instead adopted the metallicity-dependent SFR relation for [OII]λ3727 luminosities from Kewley et al. (2004).”
Metallicity Calibrations and the Mass-Metallicity Relation for Star-forming Galaxies (2008, background): “The NFGS integrated metallicities have been published by Kewley et al. (2004) for several metallicity calibrations.”
Evolution in the properties of Lyman-α emitters from redshifts z ~ 3 to z ~ 2 (2008, background): “Assuming a conversion between [OII] and Hα luminosities given by the star formation rate equations of Kennicutt (1998) and Kewley et al. (2004), the [OII] luminosity limit corresponds to an Hα luminosity limit of log L = 38.8 erg s−1 in this survey.”
Pan-STARRS1 DISCOVERY OF TWO ULTRALUMINOUS SUPERNOVAE AT z ≈ 0.9 (2011, background): “This translates to a SFR of 0.4± 0.2 M⊙ yr −1 (Kewley et al. 2004), consistent with the NUV limits given the significant uncertainties and our poor understanding of dust extinction in these systems.”
DUST-CORRECTED STAR FORMATION RATES OF GALAXIES. I. COMBINATIONS OF Hα AND INFRARED TRACERS (2009, methodology): “The calibration and reliability of the [O ii] feature as a quantitative SFR tracer has been discussed by several authors (e.g., Hopkins et al. 2003; Kewley et al. 2004; Moustakas et al. 2006).”
Star formation at z=1.47 from HiZELS: an Hα+[O ii] double-blind study* (2011, background): “After correcting for dust extinction, several studies find a [O II]/Hα average of ≈1.0–1.4 in the local Universe (cf. Kewley et al. 2004).”
Did a gamma-ray burst initiate the late Ordovician mass extinction? (2003, background): “Current research (e.g. Kewley et al. 2002) favours older estimates of strong evolution in the star formation rate, when reddening is corrected.”