Ultraviolet to far infrared self-consistent analysis of the stellar populations of massive starburst galaxies at intermediate redshifts

© 2022 The Author(s) Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Royal Astronomical Society. We are grateful with the anonymous referee for improving the manuscript contents. NEB and JZ acknowledge funding support from the Spanish Programa Nacional de Astronomía y Astrofísica under grant AYA2006-02358. NEB acknowledges support from Fac. CC. Físicas, Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM), and from Coordinación de Astrofísica, Instituto Nacional de Astrofísica ptica y Electrónica (INAOE). PGPG acknowledges funding support from the Spanish Government under grant PGC2018-093499-B-I00. LRM acknowledges support from grant PRIN MIUR 2017-20173ML3WW_001 and funding from the Universita degli studi di Padova - Dipartimento di Fisica e Astronomia 'G. Galilei'. This work has made use of the rainbow Cosmological Surveys Database, which is operated by the Centro de Astrobiología (CAB/CSIC-INTA).
We study in detail the properties of the stellar populations of 111 massive [log (M-*/M-circle dot) >= 10] dusty [far-infrared (FIR)-selected] starburst (SFR/SFRMS > 2) galaxies at 0.7 < z < 1.2. For that purpose, we use self-consistent methods that analyse the UV-to-FIR broad-band observations in terms of the stellar light and dust re-emission with energy-balance techniques. We find that the emission of our starburst galaxies can be interpreted as a recent star formation episode superimposed on a more evolved stellar population. On average, the burst age is similar to 80 Myr and its attenuation similar to 2.4 mag. Assuming our starburst galaxies at half their lifetimes, we infer a duration of the starburst phase of similar to 160 Myr. The median stellar mass and star formation rate (SFR) are log (M-*/M-circle dot) similar to 10.6 and similar to 220 M(circle dot)yr(-1). Assuming this SFR and the inferred duration of the starburst phase, the stellar mass added during this phase corresponds to similar to 40 per cent the median stellar mass of our sample. The young-population age determines the position of our galaxies in the M-*-SFR plane. Galaxies located at the largest distances of the MS present shorter young-population ages. The properties of the underlying stellar population cannot be constrained accurately with our broad-band data. We also discuss the impact of including the FIR data and energy-balance techniques in the analysis of the properties of the stellar populations in starburst galaxies.
Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (MICINN)
Universita degli studi di Padova - Dipartimento di Fisica e Astronomia 'G. Galilei'
Facultad Ciencias Físicas, Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM)
Coordinación de Astrofísica, Instituto Nacional de Astrofísica Óptica y Electrónica (INAOE)
Depto. de Física de la Tierra y Astrofísica
Fac. de Ciencias Físicas
TRUE
pub