Star-formation-rate estimates from water emission
arXiv:2304.06572 · doi:10.1051/0004-6361/202245336
Abstract
(Abridged) The star-formation rate (SFR) quantitatively describes the star-formation process in galaxies. Current ways to calibrate this rate do not usually employ observational methods accounting for the low-mass end of stellar populations as their signatures are too weak. Accessing the bulk of protostellar activity within galactic star-forming regions can be achieved by tracing signposts of ongoing star formation. One such signpost is molecular outflows, which are bright in molecular emission. We propose to utilize the protostellar outflow emission as a tracer of the SFR. In this work, we introduce a novel version of the galaxy-in-a-box model, which can be used to relate molecular emission from star formation in galaxies with the SFR. We measured the predicted para-H2O emission at 988 GHz and corresponding SFRs for galaxies with LFIR = - L in a distance-independent manner, and compared them with expectations from observations. We evaluated the derived results by varying the star formation efficiency, the free-fall time scaling factor, and the initial mass function. For the chosen H2O transition, relying on the current Galactic observations and star formation properties, we are underestimating the total galactic emission, while overestimating the SFRs, particularly for more starburst-like configurations. The current version of the galaxy-in-a-box model accounts for a limited number of processes and configurations, that is, it focuses on ongoing star formation in massive young clusters in a spiral galaxy. Therefore, the inferred results, which underestimate the emission and overestimate the SFR, are not surprising: known sources of emission are not included in the model. To improve the results, the next version of the model needs to include a more detailed treatment of the entire galactic ecosystem and other processes that would contribute to the emission.
arXiv commentAccepted for publication in A&A. 11 pages, 6 figures
References in corpus (40)
- Galactic Stellar and Substellar Initial Mass Function
- The Global Schmidt Law in Star Forming Galaxies
- Cosmic Star Formation History
- Binary companions of evolved stars in APOGEE DR14: Search method and catalog of ~5,000 companions
- Star Formation in the Milky Way and Nearby Galaxies
- The Initial Mass Function of Stars: Evidence for Uniformity in Variable Systems
- UV Star Formation Rates in the Local Universe
- Gas-regulation of galaxies: the evolution of the cosmic sSFR, the metallicity-mass-SFR relation and the stellar content of haloes
- Dusty Star-Forming Galaxies at High Redshift
- A Dust-Obscured Massive Maximum-Starburst Galaxy at a Redshift of 6.34
- [OII] as a Star Formation Rate Indicator
- Parallaxes and proper motions of interstellar masers toward the Cygnus X star-forming complex. I. Membership of the Cygnus X region
- The Relation Between SFR and Stellar Mass for Galaxies at 3.5 6.5 in CANDELS
- Astrochemistry During the Formation of Stars
- Water in Star-Forming Regions with the Herschel Space Observatory (WISH): Overview of key program and first results
- Stellar populations dominated by massive stars in dusty starburst galaxies across cosmic time
- Star-Forming Galaxies at Cosmic Noon
- A Correlation Between Surface Densities of Young Stellar Objects and Gas in Eight Nearby Molecular Clouds
- Water in star-forming regions (WISH): Physics and chemistry from clouds to disks as probed by Herschel spectroscopy
- Physical Properties of Galaxies from z=2-4
- A bright z=5.2 lensed submillimeter galaxy in the field of Abell 773: HLSJ091828.6+514223
- The Ha luminosity function and star formation rate up to z~1
- H2O emission in high-z ultra-luminous infrared galaxies
- Outflows, infall and evolution of a sample of embedded low-mass protostars. The William Herschel Line Legacy (WILL) survey
- Water in star-forming regions with Herschel (WISH). IV. A survey of low-J H2O line profiles toward high-mass protostars
- Water vapor in nearby infrared galaxies as probed by Herschel
- Submillimeter H2O and H2O+ emission in lensed ultra- and hyper-luminous infrared galaxies at z ~ 2-4
- Water vapor emission reveals a highly obscured, star forming nuclear region in the QSO host galaxy APM08279+5255 at z=3.9
- Modeling the H2O submillimeter emission in extragalactic sources
- Age spread in W3 Main: LBT/LUCI near-infrared spectroscopy of the massive stellar content
- Water and methanol in low-mass protostellar outflows: gas-phase synthesis, ice sputtering and destruction
- Herschel Far-Infrared Spectral-mapping of Orion BN/KL Outflows: Spatial distribution of excited CO, H2O, OH, O and C+ in shocked gas
- Herschel Observations of the W3 GMC: Clues to the Formation of Clusters of High-Mass Stars
- High-excitation OH and H_2O lines in Markarian 231: the molecular signatures of compact far-infrared continuum sources
- Full of Orions: a 200-pc mapping of the interstellar medium in the redshift-3 lensed dusty star-forming galaxy SDP.81
- Imaging the Molecular Interstellar Medium in a Gravitationally Lensed Star-forming Galaxy at z=5.7
- Spatially Resolved Water Emission from Gravitationally Lensed Dusty Star Forming Galaxies at z 3
- Linking High- and Low-Mass Star Formation: Observation-Based Continuum Modelling and Physical Conditions
- Water emission tracing active star formation from the Milky Way to high- galaxies
- Tracing Embedded Stellar Populations in Clusters and Galaxies using Molecular Emission: Methanol as a Signature of the Low-Mass End of the IMF