Seeking Edge-on Galaxies with Substantial Extraplanar Dust Using a Radiative Transfer Model: Determination of the Model Parameter Uncertainties for EON_10.477_41.954 (FGC 79)

Abstract

We have revisited the target EON_10.477_41.954 in order to determine more accurately the uncertainties in the model parameters that are important for target classification (i.e., galaxies with or without substantial extraplanar dust). We performed a Markov-Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) analysis for the fifteen parameters of the three-dimensional radiative-transfer galaxy model we used previously for target classification. To investigate the convergence of the MCMC sampling---which is usually neglected in the literature but should not be---we monitored the integrated autocorrelation time (${\tau }_{int}$), and we achieved effective sample sizes $>5,650$ for all the model parameters. The confidence intervals are unstable at the beginning of the iterations where the values of ${\tau }_{int}$ are increasing, but they become stable in later iterations where those values are almost constant. The final confidence intervals are $\sim 5-100$ times larger than the nominal uncertainties used in our previous study (the standard deviation of three best-fit results). Thus, those nominal uncertainties are not good proxies for the model-parameter uncertainties. Although the position of EON_10.477_41.954 in the target-classification plot (the scale-height to diameter ratio of dust vs that of light-source) decreases by about $20-30$ % when compared to our previous study, its membership in the ``high-group''---i.e., among galaxies with substantial extraplanar dust---nevertheless remains unchanged.

18 pages, 12 figures, 3 tables, MNRAS in press

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