Far-Infrared Properties of Lyman Break Galaxies from Cosmological Simulations

TL;DR

This study uses advanced cosmological simulations to analyze how Lyman Break Galaxies at redshift 2 distribute their stellar light between UV and far-infrared, successfully reproducing observed luminosity functions with a simple dust model.

Contribution

The paper introduces a high-resolution simulation-based model that simultaneously reproduces UV and FIR luminosity functions of high-redshift galaxies using a single dust obscuration parameter.

Findings

Galaxies with higher mass or SFR have more dust obscuration.

FIR luminosity function follows a power-law with slope -1.7.

Predicted a 'galaxy desert' at low SFR(FIR) in the SFR(UV)-SFR(FIR) plane.

Abstract

Utilizing state-of-the-art, adaptive mesh-refinement cosmological hydrodynamic simulations with ultra-high resolution (114h-1pc) and large sample size (>3300 galaxies of stellar mass >10^9Msun), we show how the stellar light of Lyman Break Galaxies at z=2 is distributed between optical/ultra-violet (UV) and far-infrared (FIR) bands. With a single scalar parameter for dust obscuration we can simultaneously reproduce the observed UV luminosity function for the entire range (3-100 Msun/yr) and extant FIR luminosity function at the bright end (>20Msun/yr). We quantify that galaxies more massive or having higher SFR tend to have larger amounts of dust obscuration mostly due to a trend in column density and in a minor part due to a mass (or SFR)-metallicity relation. It is predicted that the FIR luminosity function in the range SFR=1-100Msun/yr is a powerlaw with a slope about -1.7. We further predict that there is a "galaxy desert" at SFR(FIR) < 0.02 (SFR(UV)/10Msun/yr)^2.1 Msun/yr in the SFR(UV)-SFR(FIR) plane. Detailed distributions of SFR(FIR) at a fixed SFR(UV) are presented. Upcoming observations by ALMA should test this model. If confirmed, it validates the predictions of the standard cold dark matter model and has important implications on the intrinsic SFR function of galaxies at high redshift.