An Aromatic Inventory of the Local Volume

TL;DR

This study develops a photometric method to inventory aromatic feature emission in local star-forming galaxies, enabling analysis of large samples without spectroscopy and revealing correlations with metallicity.

Contribution

It introduces a calibrated infrared photometric technique to measure aromatic emission, applicable to extensive galaxy samples lacking spectroscopic data.

Findings

The aromatic luminosity in the Local Volume is quantified as 2.47E10 solar luminosities.

A correlation exists between metallicity and aromatic to IR emission ratio.

The method achieves a 6% accuracy in recovering aromatic fractions from photometry.

Abstract

Using infrared photometry from the Spitzer Space Telescope, we perform the first inventory of aromatic feature emission (AFE, but also commonly referred to as PAH emission) for a statistically complete sample of star-forming galaxies in the local volume. The photometric methodology involved is calibrated and demonstrated to recover the aromatic fraction of the IRAC 8 micron flux with a standard deviation of 6% for a training set of 40 SINGS galaxies (ranging from stellar to dust dominated) with both suitable mid-infrared Spitzer IRS spectra and equivalent photometry. A potential factor of two improvement could be realized with suitable 5.5 and 10 micron photometry, such as what may be provided in the future by JWST. The resulting technique is then applied to mid-infrared photometry for the 258 galaxies from the Local Volume Legacy (LVL) survey, a large sample dominated in number by low-luminosity dwarf galaxies for which obtaining comparable mid-infrared spectroscopy is not feasible. We find the total LVL luminosity due to five strong aromatic features in the 8 micron complex to be 2.47E10 solar luminosities with a mean volume density of 8.8E6 solar luminosities per cubic Megaparsec. Twenty-four of the LVL galaxies, corresponding to a luminosity cut at M = -18.22 in the B band, account for 90% of the aromatic luminosity. Using oxygen abundances compiled from the literature for 129 of the 258 LVL galaxies, we find a correlation between metallicity and the aromatic to total infrared emission ratio but not the aromatic to total 8 micron dust emission ratio. A possible explanation is that metallicity plays a role in the abundance of aromatic molecules relative to the total dust content, but other factors such as star formation and/or the local radiation field affect the excitation of those molecules.