The Most Luminous Starbursts in the Universe
Daniel W. Weedman, James R. Houck

TL;DR
This study analyzes the luminosities and star formation rates of 243 starburst galaxies across redshifts 0 to 2.5 using PAH features from Spitzer data, revealing maximum luminosities and SFRs consistent with optical and radio studies.
Contribution
It provides empirical calibrations linking PAH luminosities to bolometric luminosities and star formation rates for luminous starbursts across a range of redshifts.
Findings
Luminosity scales as log[vLv(7.7um)] = 44.63 + 2.48 log(1+z).
Maximum star formation rate reaches about 3400 solar masses per year at z=2.5.
Luminosity evolution exponent aligns with optical and radio studies.
Abstract
A summary of starburst luminosities based on PAH features is given for 243 starburst galaxies with 0 < z < 2.5, observed with the Spitzer Infrared Spectrograph. Luminosity vLv(7.7um) for the peak luminosity of the 7.7um PAH emission feature is found to scale as log[vLv(7.7um)] = 44.63(+-0.09) + 2.48(+-0.28)log(1+z) for the most luminous starbursts observed. Empirical calibrations of vLv(7.7um) are used to determine bolometric luminosity Lir and the star formation rate (SFR) for these starbursts. The most luminous starbursts found in this sample have log Lir = 45.4(+-0.3) + 2.5(+-0.3)log(1+z), in ergs per s, and the maximum star formation rates for starbursts in units of solar masses per yr are log(SFR) = 2.1(+-0.3) + 2.5(+-0.3)log(1+z), up to z = 2.5. The exponent for pure luminosity evolution agrees with optical and radio studies of starbursts but is flatter than previous results based…
Peer Reviews
No public reviews on file for this paper yet. If you reviewed it on a platform where reviews are public (OpenReview, ICLR, NeurIPS, ICML), you can paste yours below so the community can read it here.
Videos
No videos yet. Explain this paper in a talk, walkthrough, or lecture? Add one.
