The Current Star Formation Rate of the Local Universe

Abstract

The Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM) Survey is a long-term project aiming at finding and analysing star-forming galaxies detected by their H$\alpha$ emission in Schmidt objective-prism plates. The instrumental set-up limits the volume of the Universe surveyed to a redshift $z\lesssim 0.045$. So far we have discovered several hundred emission-line galaxies (ELGs) undergoing star formation at a wide range of levels. Analyzing a complete sample of ELGs from the UCM survey we have computed the H$\alpha$ luminosity function for the star-forming galaxies in the surveyed volume of the Universe. A Schechter function provides a good fit to the H$\alpha$ luminosity function with the following parameters: $\alpha =-1.3\pm 0.2$; $L^{\ast }(\mathrm{H}\alpha )=10^{42.15\pm 0.08}$ergs${}^{-1}$ and ${\varphi }^{\ast }=10^{-3.2\pm 0.2}$Mpc${}^{-3}$ for $H_0=50$kms${}^{-1}$Mpc${}^{-1}$. Integrating over the full range of luminosities, we obtain an H$\alpha$ luminosity density of $10^{39.1\pm 0.2}$ergs${}^{-1}$Mpc${}^{-3}$. Using the H$\alpha$ emission as a star formation rate (SFR) estimator, this translates into a SFR density for the Local Universe of $0.013_{-0.005}^{+0.007}{M}_{\odot }$yr${}^{-1}$Mpc${}^{-3}$ in star-forming galaxies with $EW($H$\alpha +$[NII]$)>10$Åand $z\lesssim 0.045$, for a Scalo Initial Mass Function. This is the first observational determination of this quantity, which will provide a direct test of current galaxy formation and evolution models.

16 pages, PS file, 1 table and 1 figure. Accepted in ApJL

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