Star Formation Rate from Dust Infrared Emission

Abstract

We examine what types of galaxies the conversion formula from dust infrared (IR) luminosity into the star formation rate (SFR) derived by Kennicutt (1998) is applicable to. The ratio of the observed IR luminosity, $L_{\mathrm{IR}}$, to the intrinsic bolometric luminosity of the newly ($\la$ 10 Myr) formed stars, $L_{\mathrm{SF}}$, of a galaxy can be determined by a mean dust opacity in the interstellar medium and the activity of the current star formation. We find that these parameters area being $0.5\le L_{\mathrm{IR}}/L_{\mathrm{SF}}\le 2.0$ is very large, and many nearby normal and active star-forming galaxies really fall in this area. It results from offsetting two effects of a small dust opacity and a large cirrus contribution of normal galaxies relative to starburst galaxies on the conversion of the stellar emission into the dust IR emission. In conclusion, the SFR determined from the IR luminosity under the assumption of $L_{\mathrm{IR}}=L_{\mathrm{SF}}$ like Kennicutt (1998) is reliable within a factor of 2 for all galaxies except for dust rich but quiescent galaxies and extremely dust poor galaxies.

Accepted by ApJL: 6 pages (emulateapj5), 2 figures (one is an extra figure not appeared in ApJL)

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• The MOSDEF Survey: Direct Observational Constraints on the Ionizing Photon Production Efficiency, ${\xi }_{\mathrm{ion}}$, at z~2
• The production and escape of Lyman-Continuum radiation from star-forming galaxies at z~2 and their redshift evolution
• Reexamination of the Infrared Excess-Ultraviolet Slope Relation of Local Galaxies
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• Modeling UV Radiation Feedback from Massive Stars: III. Escape of Radiation from Star-forming Giant Molecular Clouds
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• New-generation dust emission templates for star-forming galaxies
• A panchromatic study of BLAST counterparts: total star-formation rate, morphology, AGN fraction and stellar mass
• Correlations among Multi-Wavelength Luminosities of Star-Forming Galaxies