NEP-AKARI: Evolution with redshift of dust attenuation in 8 micron selected galaxies

TL;DR

This study investigates how dust attenuation in 8 micron selected galaxies evolves with redshift using multi-wavelength data and spectral energy distribution fitting across four redshift bins.

Contribution

It introduces a large, multi-wavelength galaxy sample and analyzes the evolution of dust attenuation with redshift using physically motivated SED fitting.

Findings

Dust attenuation increases with redshift in the studied galaxy sample.

The choice of attenuation curve affects the estimated physical parameters.

Wavelength coverage impacts the accuracy of dust attenuation estimates.

Abstract

We built a 8um selected sample of galaxies in the NEP-AKARI field by defining 4 redshift bins with the four AKARI bands at 11, 15, 18 and 24 microns (0.15<z<0.49, 0.75<z<1.34, 1.34<z<1.7 and 1.7<z<2.05) . Our sample contains 4079 sources, 599 are securely detected with Herschel/PACS. Also adding ultraviolet (UV) data from GALEX, we fit the spectral energy distributions using the physically motivated code CIGALE to extract the star formation rate, stellar mass, dust attenuation and the AGN contribution to the total infrared luminosity (L_{IR}). We discuss the impact of the adopted attenuation curve and that of the wavelength coverage to estimate these physical parameters. We focus on galaxies with a luminosity close the characteristic L_{IR}^* in the different redshift bins to study the evolution with redshift of the dust attenuation in these galaxies.