Calibration of Ultraviolet, Mid-infrared, and Radio Star Formation Rate Indicators

Brown, M. and Moustakas, J. and Kennicutt, R. and Bonne, N. and Intema, H. and De Gasperin, F. and Boquien, M. et al. 2017. Calibration of Ultraviolet, Mid-infrared, and Radio Star Formation Rate Indicators. Astrophysical Journal. 847 (2): Article ID 136.

Source Title

Astrophysical Journal

DOI

10.3847/1538-4357/aa8ad2

ISSN

0004-637X

Remarks

This is an author-created, un-copy edited version of an article accepted for publication in Astrophysical Journal. The publisher is not responsible for any errors or omissions in this version of the manuscript or any version derived from it. The Version of Record is available online at 10.3847/1538-4357/aa8ad2.

URI

http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/74319

Collection

Curtin Research Publications

Abstract

We present calibrations for star formation rate (SFR) indicators in the ultraviolet, mid-infrared, and radiocontinuumbands, including one of the first direct calibrations of 150 MHz as an SFR indicator. Our calibrationsutilize 66 nearby star-forming galaxies with Balmer-decrement-corrected Ha luminosities, which span five ordersof magnitude in SFR and have absolute magnitudes of -24 < Mr < -12. Most of our photometry andspectrophotometry are measured from the same region of each galaxy, and our spectrophotometry has beenvalidated with SDSS photometry, so our random and systematic errors are small relative to the intrinsic scatter seenin SFR indicator calibrations. We find that the Wide-field Infrared Space Explorer W4 (22.8 µm), Spitzer 24 µm,and 1.4 GHz bands have tight correlations with the Balmer-decrement-corrected Ha luminosity, with a scatter ofonly 0.2 dex. Our calibrations are comparable to those from the prior literature for L* galaxies, but for dwarfgalaxies, our calibrations can give SFRs that are far greater than those derived from most previous literature.