UV to IR SEDs of UV selected galaxies in the ELAIS fields: evolution of dust attenuation and star formation activity from z=0.7 to z=0.2

TL;DR

This study analyzes UV-to-IR spectral energy distributions of intermediate redshift UV-selected galaxies to understand how dust attenuation and star formation activity evolve from z=0.7 to z=0.2, revealing mass-dependent trends.

Contribution

It provides new insights into the evolution of dust attenuation and star formation in UV-selected galaxies across redshifts using multi-wavelength SED fitting and Bayesian analysis.

Findings

Dust attenuation decreases with redshift for low-mass galaxies.

High-mass galaxies show no significant change in dust attenuation over redshift.

Specific star formation rates decline with increasing stellar mass and decreasing redshift.

Abstract

We study the ultraviolet to far-infrared (hereafter UV-to-IR) SEDs of a sample of intermediate redshift (0.2 < z < 0.7) UV-selected galaxies from the ELAIS-N1 and ELAIS-N2 fields by fitting a multi-wavelength dataset to a library of GRASIL templates. Star formation related properties of the galaxies are derived from the library of models by using the Bayesian statistics. We find a decreasing presence of galaxies with low attenuation and low total luminosity as redshift decreases, which does not hold for high total luminosity galaxies. In addition the dust attenuation of low mass galaxies increases as redshift decreases, and this trend seems to disappear for galaxies with M* > 10^11 M_sun. This result is consistent with a mass dependent evolution of the dust to gas ratio, which could be driven by a mass dependent efficiency of star formation in star forming galaxies. The specific star formation rates (SSFR) decrease with increasing stellar mass at all redshifts, and for a given stellar mass the SSFR decreases with decreasing redshift. The differences in the slope of the M*--SSFR relation found between this work and others at similar redshift could be explained by the adopted selection criteria of the samples which, for a UV selected sample, favours blue, star forming galaxies.