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American Astronomical Society, Astrophysical Journal, 1(637), p. 227-241, 2006

DOI: 10.1086/498388

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Star Formation Rates and Extinction Properties of IR‐luminous Galaxies in theSpitzerFirst Look Survey

This paper is made freely available by the publisher.
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.

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Abstract

We investigate the instantaneous star formation rates (SFRs) and extinction properties for a large (N = 274), near-infrared (NIR: 2.2 μm) + mid-infrared (MIR: 24 μm)-selected sample of normal to ultraluminous infrared galaxies (ULIRGs; 109 < LIR/L☉ < 1012.5) with z ~ 0.8 in the Spitzer Extragalactic First Look Survey (FLS). We combine 24 μm observations with high-resolution Keck DEIMOS spectroscopy to derive optical emission-line (Hα, Hβ, and [O II]) and infrared star formation rates (SFRopt and SFRIR, respectively). Comparison of SFR diagnostics reveals a wide extinction range (1.0 < AV < 4.0 mag) for this sample, even after removing spectroscopic and IRAC color-selected AGN candidates (≈12% of the sample). Objects with SFRs of a few M☉ yr-1 have extinction values consistent with normal spirals (AV ≈ 1.0 mag). By contrast, LIRGs at z 1, which comprise a fraction of our sample, have SFR ≈ 100 M☉ yr-1 and a mean AV ≈ 2.5 mag. This translates to a 97% mean [O II] λλ3727 attentuation and in extreme cases is as high as 99.7%. We derive an IR-luminosity-dependent A function [A = 0.75 log(LIR/L☉) - 6.35 mag] that we use to extinction correct our line luminosities. The resulting correlation between SFRIR and SFRopt has a dispersion of ~0.2 dex (semi-interquartile range). Comparison of the AV dependence on redshift and LIR reveals that for a fixed LIR, there is no significant AV evolution. Comparison to previous studies reveals a mean attenuation that is intermediate between that of local optical/UV- and radio-selected samples with a marginally stronger LIR dependence.