Ultraviolet and Far-Infrared-selected Star-forming Galaxies at z = 0: Differences and Overlaps
Abstract
We study two samples of local galaxies, one UV (GALEX) selected and the other FIR (IRAS) selected, to address the question of whether UV and FIR surveys see two sides ("bright" and "dark") of the star formation of the same population of galaxies or two different populations of star-forming galaxies. No significant difference between the L_(tot) (=L_(60) + L_(FUV)) luminosity functions of the UV and FIR samples is found. In addition, after the correction for the "Malmquist bias" (bias for flux-limited samples), the FIR-to-UV ratio versus L_(tot) relations of the two samples are consistent with each other. In the range of 9 ≾ log(L_(tot)/L_⊙) ≾ 12, both can be approximated by a simple linear relation of log(L_(60)/L_(FUV)) = log(L_(tot)/L_⊙) - 9.66. These are consistent with the hypothesis that the two samples represent the same population of star-forming galaxies, and their well-documented differences in L_(tot) and in FIR-to-UV ratio are due only to the selection effect. A comparison between the UV luminosity functions shows marginal evidence for a population of faint UV galaxies missing in the FIR-selected sample. The contribution from these "FIR-quiet" galaxies to the overall UV population is insignificant, given that the K-band luminosity functions (i.e., the stellar mass functions) of the two samples do not show any significant difference.
Additional Information
© 2006 The American Astronomical Society. Received 2005 December 22; accepted 2006 April 3. GALEX (Galaxy Evolution Explorer) is a NASA Small Explorer, launched in 2003 April. We gratefully acknowledge NASA's support for construction, operation, and science analysis for the GALEX mission, developed in cooperation with the Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales of France and the South Korean Ministry of Science and Technology. We thank an anonymous referee for very constructive comments. This research has made use of the NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database (NED), which is operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.Attached Files
Published - XUCapj06.pdf
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Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 24033
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- CaltechAUTHORS:20110616-113836578
- NASA
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2011-06-16Created from EPrint's datestamp field
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2021-11-09Created from EPrint's last_modified field
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- Space Astrophysics Laboratory