Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics
Scientific paper
2005-09-15
Mon.Not.Roy.Astron.Soc.Lett.368:L47-L51,2006
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astrophysics
5 pages, 5 figures, MNRAS Letters, revised version
Scientific paper
10.1111/j.1745-3933.2006.00154.x
We study the relation between the star formation intensity of galaxies and the extinction by dust of their emitted light. We employ a detailed statistical analysis of Hubble Deep Field North data to show a clear positive correlation between the extinction and star formation intensity at all epochs from redshift 0.4 to 6.5. The extinction evidently increases with time for a given star formation intensity, consistent with the expected increase in the metallicity with time. Our observational results are well fitted at all epochs by a double power-law model with a fixed shape that simply shifts with redshift. The correlation between the extinction and the star formation intensity can be interpreted by combining two other trends: the correlation between the star formation rate and the gas content of galaxies, and the evolution of the dust-to-gas ratio in galaxies. If we assume that Kennicutt's observed relation for the former is valid at each redshift, then our findings imply an interesting variation in the dust-to-gas ratio in galaxies within each epoch and with time, and suggest new ways to investigate the cosmic evolution of this quantity.
Barkana Rennan
Thompson Rodger I.
Zoran Oren
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