No Arabic abstract
We present our analysis of UV attenuation by internal dust of a large sample (N=906 galaxies) of Lyman Break Galaxies (LBGs). Using spectral energy distributions (SEDs) from the PEGASE galaxy spectral evolution model we apply dust attenuation corrections to the G-R colors using the Witt & Gordon (2000) models for radiative transfer in dusty galactic environments to arrive at the UV attenuation factors. We show that the dust in the LBGs exhibit SMC-like characteristics rather than MW-like, and that the dust geometry in these systems is most likely to be represented by a clumpy shell configuration. We show that the attenuation factor exhibits a pronounced dependence on the luminosity of the LBG, $a_{1600}propto (L/L_sun)^alpha$, where $0.5leqalphaleq1.5$. The exponent $alpha$ depends on the initial parameters of the stellar population chosen to model the galaxies and the dust properties. We find that the luminosity weighted average attenuation factor is likely to be in the range from $5.7-18.5$, which is consistent with the upper limits to the star formation rate at $2<z<4$ set by the FIR background. This implies that the current UV/optical surveys do detect the bulk of the star formation during the epoch $2<z<4$, but require substantial correction for internal dust attenuation.
We explore from a statistical point of view the far-infrared (far-IR) and sub-millimeter (sub-mm) properties of a large sample of LBGs (22,000) at z~3 in the COSMOS field. The large number of galaxies allows us to split it in several bins as a function of UV luminosity, UV slope, and stellar mass to better sample their variety. We perform stacking analysis in PACS (100 and 160 um), SPIRE (250, 350 and 500 um) and AzTEC (1.1 mm) images. Our stacking procedure corrects the biases induced by galaxy clustering and incompleteness of our input catalogue in dense regions. We obtain the full IR spectral energy distributions (SED) of subsamples of LBGs and derive the mean IR luminosity as a function of UV luminosity, UV slope, and stellar mass. The average IRX is roughly constant over the UV luminosity range, with a mean of 7.9 (1.8 mag). However, it is correlated with UV slope, and stellar mass. We investigate using a statistically-controlled stacking analysis as a function of (stellar mass, UV slope) the dispersion of the IRX-UVslope and IRX-M* plane. Our results enable us to study the average relation between star-formation rate (SFR) and stellar mass, and we show that our LBG sample lies on the main sequence of star formation at z~3.
Using GALFORM, a semi-analytical model of galaxy formation in the Lambda cold dark matter cosmology, we study the rest-frame ultraviolet (UV) colours of Lyman-break galaxies (LBGs) in the redshift range 2.5 < z < 10. As the impact of dust on UV luminosity can be dramatic, our model includes a self-consistent computation of dust attenuation based on a radiative transfer model. We find that intrinsically brighter galaxies suffer stronger dust attenuation than fainter ones, though the relation has a large scatter. The model predicts galaxies with UV colours consistent with the colour selection regions designed to select LBGs in observational surveys. We find that the drop-out technique that selects LBGs based on two rest-frame UV colours is robust and effective, selecting more than 70 per cent of UV bright galaxies at a given redshift. We investigate the impact on the predicted UV colours of varying selected model parameters. We find that the UV colours are most sensitive to the modelling of dust attenuation and in particular, to the extinction curve used in the radiative transfer calculation. If we assume a Milky Way dust extinction curve, the predicted UV continuum slopes are, in general, bluer than observed. However, we find that the opposite is true when using the Small Magellanic Cloud dust extinction curve. This demonstrates the strong dependence of UV colours on dust properties and highlights the inadequacy of using the UV continuum slope as a tracer of dust attenuation without any further knowledge of the galaxy inclination or dust characteristics in high redshift galaxies.
We use hydrodynamic simulations to predict correlations between Lya forest absorption and galaxies at redshift z~3. The probability distribution function (PDF) of Lya flux decrements shifts systematically towards higher values in the vicinity of galaxies, reflecting the overdense environments in which these galaxies reside. The predicted signal remains strong in spectra smoothed over 50-200 km/s, allowing tests with moderate resolution quasar spectra. The strong bias of high redshift galaxies towards high density regions imprints a clear signature on the flux PDF, but the predictions are not sensitive to galaxy baryon mass or star formation rate, and they are similar for galaxies and for dark matter halos. The dependence of the flux PDF on galaxy proximity is sensitive to redshift determination errors, with rms errors of 150-300 km/s substantially weakening the predicted trends. On larger scales, the mean galaxy overdensity in a cube of 5 or 10 Mpc/h (comoving) is strongly correlated with the mean Lya flux decrement on a line of sight through the cube center. The slope of the correlation is ~3 times steeper for galaxies than for dark matter as a result of galaxy bias. The predicted large scale correlation is in qualitative agreement with recently reported observational results. However, observations also show a drop in absorption in the immediate vicinity of galaxies, which our models do not predict even if we allow the galaxies or AGNs within them to be ionizing sources. This decreased absorption could be a signature of galaxy feedback on the surrounding IGM, perhaps via galactic winds. Peculiar velocities often allow gas at comoving distances ~1.5 Mpc/h to produce saturated absorption at the galaxy redshift, so any feedback mechanism must suppress neutral hydrogen out to these radii to match the data. (Abridged)
We make a detailed investigation of the properties of Lyman-break galaxies (LBGs) in the LambdaCDM model. We present predictions for two published variants of the GALFORM semi-analytical model: the Baugh et al. (2005) model, which has star formation at high redshifts dominated by merger-driven starbursts with a top-heavy IMF, and the Bower et al. (2006) model, which has AGN feedback and a standard Solar neighbourhood IMF throughout. We show predictions for the evolution of the rest-frame far-UV luminosity function in the redshift range z=3-20, and compare with the observed luminosity functions of LBGs at z=3-10. We find that the Baugh et al. model is in excellent agreement with these observations, while the Bower et al. model predicts too many high-luminosity LBGs. Dust extinction, which is predicted self-consistently based on galaxy gas contents, metallicities and sizes, is found to have a large effect on LBG luminosities. We compare predictions for the size evolution of LBGs at different luminosities with observational data for 2<z<7, and find the Baugh et al. model to be in good agreement. We present predictions for stellar, halo and gas masses, star formation rates, circular velocities, bulge-to-disk ratios, gas and stellar metallicities and clustering bias, as functions of far-UV luminosity and redshift. We find broad consistency with current observational constraints. We then present predictions for the abundance and angular sizes of LBGs out to very high redshift (z<20), finding that planned deep surveys with JWST should detect objects out to z<15. The typical UV luminosities of galaxies are predicted to be very low at high redshifts, which has implications for detecting the galaxies responsible for reionizing the IGM; for example, at z=10, 50% of the ionizing photons are expected to be produced by galaxies fainter than M_AB(1500A)-5logh ~ -15.
Ultraviolet (UV) galaxies have been selected from GALEX. The presence of a FUV-dropout in their spectral energy distributions proved to be a very complete (83.3%) but not very efficient (21.4%) tool for identifying Lyman Break Galaxies (LBGs) at z~1. We divide the LBG sample into two sub-classes: red LBGs (RLBGs) detected at 24 micron which are mainly Luminous IR Galaxies (LIRGs) and blue LBGs (BLBGs) undetected at 24 microns down to 83 microJy. Two of the RLBGs are also detected at 70 micron. The median SED of the RLBGs is similar (above lambda~1 micron) to the dusty starburst HR10. However, unlike local (U)LIRGs, RLBGs are UV bright objects. We suggest that these objects contain a large amount of dust but that some bare stellar populations are also directly visible. The median SED of the BLBGs is consistent with their containing the same stellar population as the RLBGs but with a lower dust content. The luminosity function of our LBG sample at z~1 is similar to the luminosity function of NUV-selected galaxies at the same redshift. The integrated luminosity densities of z~1 LBGs and NUV-selected galaxies are very consistent. We show that star formation rates (SFRs) estimated from UV measurements and corrected using the IRX-beta method provide average total SFR_TOT in agreement with SFR_UV + SFR_dust. However, IRX-beta-based SFR_TOT shows a large dispersion. Summing up the detected UV (1150A rest-frame) and IR-based star formation rates of the detected objects, we find that only one third of the total (i.e. UV + dust) LBG SFR resides in BLBGs and two thirds in RLBGs, even though most LBGs at z~1 are BLBGs. On the other hand, the total SFR of LBGs accounts for only 11% of the total SFR at z~1. Finally, we observe a regular decrease of L_TIR / L_FUV from z=0 to z~2 for UV-selected samples.