A Herschel Survey of the [N II] 205 μm Line in Local Luminous Infrared Galaxies: The [N II] 205 μm Emission as a Star Formation Rate Indicator
Abstract
We present, for the first time, a statistical study of [N II] 205 μm line emission for a large sample of local luminous infrared galaxies using Herschel Spectral and Photometric Imaging Receiver Fourier Transform Spectrometer (SPIRE FTS) data. For our sample of galaxies, we investigate the correlation between the [N II] luminosity (L_([N II])) and the total infrared luminosity (L_(IR)), as well as the dependence of L_([N II])/L_(IR) ratio on L_(IR), far-infrared colors (IRAS f_(60)/f_(100)), and the [O III] 88 μm to [N II] luminosity ratio. We find that L_([N II]) correlates almost linearly with L_(IR) for non-active galactic nucleus galaxies (all having L_(IR) < 10^(12) L_☉) in our sample, which implies that L_([N II]) can serve as a star formation rate tracer which is particularly useful for high-redshift galaxies that will be observed with forthcoming submillimeter spectroscopic facilities such as the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array. Our analysis shows that the deviation from the mean L_([N II])-L_(IR) relation correlates with tracers of the ionization parameter, which suggests that the scatter in this relation is mainly due to the variations in the hardness, and/or ionization parameter, of the ambient galactic UV field among the sources in our sample.
Additional Information
© 2013 American Astronomical Society. Received 2012 December 11; accepted 2013 January 30; published 2013 February 14. Herschel is an ESA space observatory with science instruments provided by European-led Principal Investigator consortia and with important participation from NASA. We thank the anonymous referee for comments which improved this manuscript. This work is based in part on observations made with Herschel, an European Space Agency Cornerstone Mission with significant participation by NASA. Support for this work was provided in part by NASA through an award issued by JPL/Caltech. Research for this project is partially supported by the Natural Science Foundation of China (grant 10833006) and Jiangsu Province (SBK201120678). Y.Z. thanks IPAC for the hospitality and the financial support during his visit. 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 - 2041-8205_765_1_L13.pdf
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Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 37744
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20130403-132809094
- NASA/JPL/Caltech
- National Natural Science Foundation of China
- 10833006
- National Natural Science Foundation of China Jiangsu Province
- SBK201120678
- Created
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2013-04-03Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2021-11-09Created from EPrint's last_modified field
- Caltech groups
- Infrared Processing and Analysis Center (IPAC)