Optical Star-Formation Rate Indicators

Details Optical Star-Formation Rate Indicators Optical Star-Formation Rate Indicators

2005-11-25

arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0511730v2

Astrophys.J.642:775-796,2006

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astrophysics

ApJ, accepted; no changes from previously posted version; emulateapj style; 41 pages, 23 figures, 2 tables

Scientific paper

10.1086/500964

Using integrated optical spectrophotometry for 412 star-forming galaxies at z~0, and fiber-aperture spectrophotometry for 120,846 SDSS galaxies at z~0.1, we investigate the H-alpha, H-beta, [O II] 3727, and [O III] 5007 nebular emission lines and the U-band luminosity as quantitative star-formation rate (SFR) indicators. We demonstrate that the extinction-corrected H-alpha luminosity is a reliable SFR tracer even in highly obscured star-forming galaxies. We find that variations in dust reddening dominate the systematic uncertainty in SFRs derived from the observed H-beta, [O II], and U-band luminosities, producing a factor of ~1.7, ~2.5, and ~2.1 scatter in the mean transformations, respectively. We show that [O II] depends weakly on variations in oxygen abundance over a wide range in metallicity, 12+log(O/H)=8.15-8.7 dex (Z/Z_sun=0.28-1.0), and that in this metallicity interval galaxies occupy a narrow range in ionization parameter (-3.8

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