Affiliation: Macquarie University

Contribution: Poster

Title: EMU/GAMA: Understanding the link between dust geometry and star formation rate in galaxies

Abstract: We investigate the link between dust obscuration and star formation rate (SFR) estimators using H⍺ luminosities, and radio luminosities. The ratio of SFRs estimated from radio luminosity and H⍺ luminosity corrected for dust attenuation using the Balmer decrement (BD) can be used as a probe of the degree of optically thick dust affecting H⍺. We explore this by drawing on dust estimates using both the BD and the dust mass, demonstrating systematic underlying dependencies with the radio luminosity to H⍺ luminosity ratio (Ahmed+2024a,b). We introduce two novel parameters 𝑯𝒅𝒖𝒔𝒕 and 𝑭𝒅𝒖𝒔𝒕 to quantify the properties of dust in galaxies. We establish a tight correlation between 𝑯𝒅𝒖𝒔𝒕 and H⍺ deficit, establishing this parameter as a clear tracer of optically thick dust to define an improved estimate of H⍺ luminosity, and hence H⍺ SFR.

This contribution can be found at the Poster Hall.