Spatial disconnection between stellar and dust emissions: the test of the Antennae Galaxies (Arp 244)

Abstract

The detection with of the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) of dust-rich high redshift galaxies whose cold dust emission is spatially disconnected from the ultraviolet emission bears a challenge for modelling their spectral energy distributions (SED) with codes based on an energy budget between the stellar and dust components. We test the validity of energy balance modelling on a nearby resolved galaxy with vastly different ultraviolet and infrared spatial distributions and infer what information can be reliably retrieved from the analysis of the full spectral energy distribution. We use 15 broadband images of the Antennae Galaxies ranging from far-ultraviolet to far-infrared and divide Arp 244 into 58 square ~1 kpc${}^2$ regions. We fit the data with CIGALE to determine the star formation rate, stellar mass and dust attenuation of each region. We compare these quantities for the addition of the 58 regions to the ones obtained for Arp 244 as a whole and find that both estimates are consistent within one sigma. We present the spatial distribution of these physical parameters as well as the shape of the attenuation curve across the Antennae Galaxies . We also observe a flattening of the attenuation curves with increasing attenuation and dust surface density in agreement with the predictions of hydrodynamical simulations coupled with radiative transfer modelling.

13 pages, 9 figures, Accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysics

References in corpus (22)

• The EAGLE project: Simulating the evolution and assembly of galaxies and their environments
• Infrared Emission from Interstellar Dust. IV. The Silicate-Graphite-PAH Model in the Post-Spitzer Era
• The EAGLE simulations of galaxy formation: calibration of subgrid physics and model variations
• A simple model to interpret the ultraviolet, optical and infrared emission from galaxies
• The GALEX Ultraviolet Atlas of Nearby Galaxies
• Kiloparsec-scale dust disks in high-redshift luminous submillimeter galaxies
• SKIRT: an Advanced Dust Radiative Transfer Code with a User-Friendly Architecture
• Sunrise: Polychromatic Dust Radiative Transfer in Arbitrary Geometries
• Constraining the properties of AGN host galaxies with Spectral Energy Distribution modeling
• A parsec-resolution simulation of the Antennae galaxies: Formation of star clusters during the merger
• VLA and ALMA Imaging of Intense, Galaxy-Wide Star Formation in z ~ 2 Galaxies
• Far-infrared and dust properties of present-day galaxies in the EAGLE simulations
• Characterizing the UV-to-NIR shape of the dust attenuation curve of IR luminous galaxies up to z$\sim$2
• Impact of star formation history on the measurement of star formation rates
• Cold dust and stellar emissions in dust-rich galaxies observed with ALMA: a challenge for SED-fitting techniques
• Evaluating and Improving Semi-analytic modelling of Dust in Galaxies based on Radiative Transfer Calculations
• The Strength of the 2175Å Feature in the Attenuation Curves of Galaxies at 0.1<z<3
• Characterizing Dust Attenuation in Local Star Forming Galaxies: Inclination Effects and the 2175Å Feature
• Large and small-scale structures and the dust energy balance problem in spiral galaxies
• The fate of the Antennae galaxies
• The ALPINE-ALMA [CII] survey: dust attenuation curves at z=4.4-5.5
• Unveiling the nature of 11 dusty star-forming galaxies at the peak of cosmic star formation history