Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy
Scientific paper
Jan 2012
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2012aas...21924618p&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #219, #246.18
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astronomy
Scientific paper
A robust determination of the galaxy stellar population properties is imperative for galaxy formation and evolution studies. We explore the dependence of these properties derived from broad-band spectral energy distribution fitting - such as stellar mass, etc. - on a variety of parameters, such as star formation histories, initial mass function, dust reddening, wavelength coverage etc.. using mock galaxies obtained with semi-analytic models. We confirm our earlier results that usually adopted κ-models tend to overestimate star formation rates and underestimate stellar masses.
We show that - for mock star-forming galaxies - galaxy properties can be well determined simultaneously only when one uses the right setup and wavelength coverage, i.e. the correct star formation history, which is the case for inverted-τ models at high-z (Δ log M* = 0.04 dex). Since the right star formation history is normally unknown, we quantify the offsets generated by adopting standard fitting setups. Stellar masses and ages are generally underestimated. For setups with a variety of star formation histories the median mass recovery at z 2-3 is as decent as 0.1 dex. At z 0.5 the stellar mass can be underestimated by as much as 0.6 dex because of the variety of possible star formation histories and ages. Excluding reddening from the fitting improves the result by avoiding unrealistically young and dusty solutions. Hence, stellar masses are underestimated less ( 0.3 dex at z 0.5). The recovery of properties is substantially better for mock passive galaxies (e.g. Δ log M* 0.01 dex). The wavelength coverage adopted in the fitting is crucial; a coverage from the rest-frame UV to the rest-frame near-IR appears to be optimal. We quantify the effect of narrowing the wavelength coverage which can be useful for planning observational surveys. We provide simple scaling relations that allow the transformation of stellar masses obtained using different fitting setups.
Maraston Claudia
Pforr Janine
Tonini Chiara
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