No Arabic abstract
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.
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.
Dust attenuation in galaxies has been extensively studied nearby, however, there are still many unknowns regarding attenuation in distant galaxies. We contribute to this effort using observations of star-forming galaxies in the redshift range z = 0.05-0.15 from the DYNAMO survey. Highly star-forming DYNAMO galaxies share many similar attributes to clumpy, star-forming galaxies at high redshift. Considering integrated Sloan Digital Sky Survey observations, trends between attenuation and other galaxy properties for DYNAMO galaxies are well matched to star-forming galaxies at high redshift. Integrated gas attenuations of DYNAMO galaxies are 0.2-2.0 mags in the V-band, and the ratio of stellar E(B-V) and gas E(B-V) is 0.78-0.08 (compared to 0.44 at low redshift). Four highly star-forming DYNAMO galaxies were observed at H-alpha using the Hubble Space Telescope and at Pa-alpha using integral field spectroscopy at Keck. The latter achieve similar resolution (~0.8-1 kpc) to our HST imaging using adaptive optics, providing resolved observations of gas attenuations of these galaxies on sub-kpc scales. We find < 1.0 mag of variation in attenuation (at H-alpha) from clump to clump, with no evidence of highly attenuated star formation. Attenuations are in the range 0.3-2.2 mags in the V band, consistent with attenuations of low redshift star-forming galaxies. The small spatial variation on attenuation suggests that a majority of the star-formation activity in these four galaxies occurs in relatively unobscured regions and, thus, star-formation is well characterised by our H-alpha observations.
We use deep GALEX images of CDFS in UV to define the first large sample of 420 Lyman Break Galaxies at z~1. We use a PSF fitting to estimate UV magnitudes on these deep crowded images. Deep Spitzer IRAC and MIPS provide the first detection of a large sample of Lyman Break Galaxies in the mid- to far-infrared range. We are therefore able to study and compare the UV and TIR emission of Lyman Break Galaxies. We find that about 15% of the LBG sample are strong emitters at 24 microns (Red LBGs). Most of them are Luminous IR Galaxies (LIRGs) while the rest (Blue LBGs) are undetected at the 83 microJy level of MIPS GTO image. We find that Blue LBGs have a Spectral Energy Distribution similar to high redshift Lyman Break Galaxies. Finally, the dust-to-FUV ratio of this sample is compared with similar ratios at z=1 and z~2. This work suggests an evolution (decrease) of the dust-to-FUV ratio with the redshift.
A diverse range of dust attenuation laws is found in star-forming galaxies. In particular, Tress et al. (2018) studied the SHARDS survey to constrain the NUV bump strength (B) and the total-to selective ratio (Rv) of 1,753 star-forming galaxies in the GOODS-N field at 1.5<z<3. We revisit here this sample to assess the implications and possible causes of the correlation found between Rv and B. The UVJ bicolour plot and main sequence of star formation are scrutinised to look for clues into the observed trend. The standard boundary between quiescent and star-forming galaxies is preserved when taking into account the wide range of attenuation parameters. However, an additional degeneracy, regarding the effective attenuation law, is added to the standard loci of star-forming galaxies in the UVJ diagram. A simple phenomenological model with an age-dependent extinction (at fixed dust composition) is compatible with the observed trend between Rv and B, whereby the opacity decreases with the age of the populations, resulting in a weaker NUV bump when the overall attenuation is shallower (greyer). In addition, we compare the constraints obtained by the SHARDS sample with dust models from the literature, supporting a scenario where geometry could potentially drive the correlation between Rv and B
We present the results of a new study of dust attenuation at redshifts $3 < z < 4$ based on a sample of $236$ star-forming galaxies from the VANDELS spectroscopic survey. Motivated by results from the First Billion Years (FiBY) simulation project, we argue that the intrinsic spectral energy distributions (SEDs) of star-forming galaxies at these redshifts have a self-similar shape across the mass range $8.2 leq$ log$(M_{star}/M_{odot}) leq 10.6$ probed by our sample. Using FiBY data, we construct a set of intrinsic SED templates which incorporate both detailed star formation and chemical abundance histories, and a variety of stellar population synthesis (SPS) model assumptions. With this set of intrinsic SEDs, we present a novel approach for directly recovering the shape and normalization of the dust attenuation curve. We find, across all of the intrinsic templates considered, that the average attenuation curve for star-forming galaxies at $zsimeq3.5$ is similar in shape to the commonly-adopted Calzetti starburst law, with an average total-to-selective attenuation ratio of $R_{V}=4.18pm0.29$. We show that the optical attenuation ($A_V$) versus stellar mass ($M_{star}$) relation predicted using our method is consistent with recent ALMA observations of galaxies at $2<z<3$ in the emph{Hubble} emph{Ultra} emph{Deep} emph{Field} (HUDF), as well as empirical $A_V - M_{star}$ relations predicted by a Calzetti-like law. Our results, combined with other literature data, suggest that the $A_V - M_{star}$ relation does not evolve over the redshift range $0<z<5$, at least for galaxies with log$(M_{star}/M_{odot}) gtrsim 9.5$. Finally, we present tentative evidence which suggests that the attenuation curve may become steeper at log$(M_{star}/M_{odot}) lesssim 9.0$.