The importance of nebular emission for SED modeling of distant star-forming galaxies

TL;DR

This paper emphasizes the critical role of nebular emission in modeling the spectral energy distributions of high-redshift star-forming galaxies, affecting derived physical parameters and revealing distinct galaxy categories.

Contribution

It demonstrates the significant impact of nebular emission on SED fitting and galaxy property inference, and identifies two galaxy categories with different star-formation characteristics.

Findings

Majority (~60-70%) of galaxies are better fit with nebular emission included.

Nebular emission influences estimates of galaxy mass, SFR, and age.

Evidence for two galaxy categories: starbursts and post-starbursts.

Abstract

We highlight and discuss the importance of accounting for nebular emission in the SEDs of high redshift galaxies, as lines and continuum emission can contribute significantly or subtly to broad-band photometry. Physical parameters such as the galaxy age, mass, star-formation rate, dust attenuation and others inferred from SED fits can be affected to different extent by the treatment of nebular emission. We analyse a large sample of Lyman break galaxies from z~3-6, and show some main results illustrating e.g. the importance of nebular emission for determinations of the mass-SFR relation, attenuation and age. We suggest that a fairly large scatter in such relations could be intrinsic. We find that the majority of objects (~60-70%) is better fit with SEDs accounting for nebular emission; the remaining galaxies are found to show relatively weak or no emission lines. Our modeling, and supporting empirical evidence, suggests the existence of two categories of galaxies, "starbursts" and "post-starbursts" (lower SFR and older galaxies) among the LBG population, and relatively short star-formation timescales.