The IRX-Beta Relation in kpc-sized Star Forming Regions in Nearby Galaxies

TL;DR

This study investigates the IRX-beta relation in star-forming regions across 29 galaxies, revealing correlations with metallicity and suggesting similar dust attenuation laws at both regional and galactic scales.

Contribution

It provides new insights into how dust attenuation laws vary with metallicity and extends the IRX-beta relation analysis to kpc-sized star-forming regions in nearby galaxies.

Findings

Metal-rich regions have steeper attenuation curves.

IRX correlates strongly with gas-phase metallicity.

Galactic IRX-beta relation resembles that of star-forming regions.

Abstract

The effect of dust attenuation on a galaxy's light depends on a number of physical properties, such as geometry and dust composition, both of which can vary across the faces of galaxies. To investigate this variation, we continue analysis on star-forming regions in 29 galaxies studied previously. We analyse these regions using Swift/UVOT and WISE images, as well as SDSS/MaNGA emission line maps to constrain the relationship between the infrared excess (IRX) and the UV spectral index (beta) for each star forming region. This relationship can be used to constrain which dust attenuation law is appropriate for the region. We find that the value of Dn(4000) for a region is correlated with both IRX and beta, and that the gas-phase metallicity is strongly correlated with the IRX. This correlation between metallicity and IRX suggests that regardless of aperture, metal rich regions have steeper attenuation curves. We also find that integrated galactic light follows nearly the same IRX-beta relationship as that found for kiloparsec-sized star forming regions. This similarity may suggest that the attenuation law followed by the galaxy is essentially the same as that followed by the regions, although the relatively large size of our star forming regions complicates this interpretation because optical opacity and attenuation curves have been observed to vary within individual galaxies.