PAH and Mid-Infrared Luminosities as Measures of Star Formation Rate in Spitzer First Look Survey Galaxies

By Hong Wu, Chen Cao, C. Hao, Fengshan Liu, Jianling Wang, X. Xia, Z. Deng, C. Young. 2005

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We present evidence that the 8 μm (dust) and 24 μm luminosities of star-forming galaxies are both strongly correlated with their 1.4 GHz and Hα luminosities over a range in luminosity of 2-3 orders of magnitude. At the bright end, the correlations are found to be essentially linear over a luminosity range of about 2 orders of magnitude (corresponding to star formation rates of several tenths to several tens of solar masses per year). However, at the faint end there appears to be a slope change for dwarf galaxies, possibly due to the lower dust-to-gas ratios and lower metallicities of the dwarfs. The correlations suggest that PAH features and mid-IR continuum emissions are good measures of the star formation rates of galaxies, and we present calibrations of star formation rates based on existing radio and Hα relations. Our findings are based on a sample of star-forming galaxies selected from the main field of the Spitzer First Look Survey with the aid of spectroscopic data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and VLA 1.4 GHz data.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/bd858a9f26ec4dba13208216d7522239dafea570

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Citations in the corpus

DUST OBSCURATION AND METALLICITY AT HIGH REDSHIFT: NEW INFERENCES FROM UV, Hα, AND 8 μm OBSERVATIONS OF z ∼ 2 STAR-FORMING GALAXIES (2010, methodology): “The Wu et al. (2005) relations are calibrated on radio and Hα data for local galaxies (z < 0.2) drawn from the Spitzer First Look Survey (FLS; e.g., Frayer et al. 2006).”
The Calibration of Mid-Infrared Star Formation Rate Indicators (2007, background): “…field of galaxies or near B stars (Li & Draine 2002; Haas, Klaas & Bianchi 2002; Boselli, Lequeux & Gavazzi 2004; Peeters, Spoon & Tielens 2004; Wu et al. 2005; Mattioda et al. 2005), and which can be destroyed, fragmented, or ionized by harsh UV photon fields (Boulanger et al. 1988, 1990;…”
Warm Molecular Hydrogen in the Spitzer SINGS Galaxy Sample (2007, methodology): “We then compared this with the star formation rate estimated from the 24 m luminosity, using the calibration of Wu et al. (2005) for the same initialmass function.”
THE CALIBRATION OF MONOCHROMATIC FAR-INFRARED STAR FORMATION RATE INDICATORS (2010, methodology): “Direct fits of L(24) as a function of a variety of reference SFR indicators do show such non–linear behavior (Wu et al. 2005; Alonso–Herrero et al. 2006; Perez–Gonzalez et al. 2006; Calzetti et al. 2007; Zhu et al. 2008), and the relation between SFR and L(24) requires the mediation of a power law…”
Dust spectral energy distributions of nearby galaxies: an insight from the Herschel Reference Survey (2014, methodology): “We would expect a tighter correlation as PAHs are often used as SFR indicators although many caveats on this assumption have been discussed in the literature (Boselli et al. 2004; Wu et al. 2005; Calzetti et al. 2007; Zhu et al. 2008; Kennicutt et al. 2009).”
DUST-CORRECTED STAR FORMATION RATES OF GALAXIES. I. COMBINATIONS OF Hα AND INFRARED TRACERS (2009, methodology): “The calibrations of Wu et al. (2005) and Relaño et al. (2007) mitigate this effect by fitting a nonlinear relation between L(24) and L(Hα), which effectively builds in a decrease in mean attenuation with decreasing SFR.”
DISCOVERY OF AN ACTIVE GALACTIC NUCLEUS DRIVEN MOLECULAR OUTFLOW IN THE LOCAL EARLY-TYPE GALAXY NGC 1266 (2011, methodology): “We subtract off the stellar contribution from the 8.0µm flux by scaling the 3.6µm image; the scale factor of the 3.6µm image can range from 0.22 to 0.29 (Calzetti et al. 2007), with elliptical galaxies having typical values of 0.26 (Wu et al. 2005; Shapiro et al. 2010).”
A Spitzer Space Telescope Study of Disks in the Young σ Orionis Cluster (2007, background): “Some of these PAH features (e.g., those at 7.7, 8.6, 11.2, 12.7, 16.4, and 17.1 m) are correlated with star formation rates (Wu et al. 2005).”
MID-INFRARED SPECTROSCOPY OF SUBMILLIMETER GALAXIES: EXTENDED STAR FORMATION IN MASSIVE HIGH-REDSHIFT GALAXIES (2009, background): “With the advent of Spitzer, 8µm IRAC results from Wu et al. (2005) and Alonso-Herrero et al. (2006) further confirmed that the 8µm band flux is closely associated with the starformation taking place in low-redshift (z .”
The ATLAS3D Project – XXVIII. Dynamically driven star formation suppression in early-type galaxies (2014, methodology): “The 8µm SFRs were estimated using the calibration of Wu et al. (2005), that is based upon a different galaxy sample, and this may be the cause of the larger scatter.”
The Infrared Luminosity Function of Galaxies at Redshifts z = 1 and z ~ 2 in the GOODS Fields (2007, background): “…of knots of star formation (Roussel et al. 2001; Förster-Schreiber et al. 2004; Calzetti et al. 2005) and of the overall star-formation activity of star-forming galaxies (e.g. Wu et al. 2005), except in low-luminosity galaxies with intense ultraviolet (UV) radiation fields (Galliano et al. 2005).”
Hubble Space Telescope and Spitzer Imaging of Red and Blue Galaxies at z ~ 2.5: A Correlation between Size and Star Formation Activity from Compact Quiescent Galaxies to Extended Star-forming Galaxies (2007, methodology): “…out of the 24 m band, so in the following we concentrate on the galaxies in our sample with z < 2:5, which leaves 19 DRGs and four DBGs. Assuming that the 24 m flux is dominated by star formation, the PAH andMIR emission can be used to estimate the current SFR of the galaxies (Wu et al. 2005).”
CALIBRATING EXTINCTION-FREE STAR FORMATION RATE DIAGNOSTICS WITH 33 GHz FREE–FREE EMISSION IN NGC 6946 (2011, unknown): “Thus, we also include a monochromatic 24µm based SFR diagnostic, for which there are a number of calibrations in the literature (e.g., Wu et al. 2005; Pérez-González et al. 2006; Alonso-Herrero et al. 2006; Calzetti et al. 2007; Relaño et al. 2007; Zhu et al. 2008; Rieke et al. 2009).”
The applicability of far-infrared fine-structure lines as star formation rate tracers over wide ranges of metallicities and galaxy types (2014, background): “…other star formation rate tracers on both local scales (Calzetti et al. 2007; Leroy et al. 2008) and global scales (e.g., Calzetti et al. 2005, 2007; Wu et al. 2005; Alonso-Herrero et al. 2006; Pérez-González et al. 2006; Zhu et al. 2008; Kennicutt et al. 2009; Rieke et al. 2009; Hao et al. 2011)…”
Star Formation in the Milky Way and Nearby Galaxies (2012, background): “Wu et al. (2005b) have subsequently shown that this linear relation extends down to the scales of individual star-forming molecular clouds and dense clumps in the Galaxy.”