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arXiv · 2103.00666

Estimating dust attenuation from galactic spectra. II. Stellar and gas attenuation in star-forming and diffuse ionized gas regions in MaNGA

Niu Li·Cheng Li·Houjun Mo·Shuang Zhou·Fu-heng Liang·Médéric Boquien·Niv Drory·José G. Fernández-Trincado·Michael Greener·Rogério Riffel
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Abstract

We investigate the dust attenuation in both stellar populations and ionized gas in kpc-scale regions in nearby galaxies, using integral field spectroscopy data from MaNGA MPL-9. We identify star-forming (HII) and diffuse ionized gas (DIG) regions from MaNGA datacubes. From the stacked spectrum of each region, we measure the stellar attenuation, $E(B-V)_{\rm star}$, using the technique developed by Li et al.(2020), as well as the gas attenuation, $E(B-V)_{\rm gas}$, from the Balmer decrement. We then examine the correlation of $E(B-V)_{\rm star}$, $E(B-V)_{\rm gas}$, $E(B-V)_{\rm gas}-E(B-V)_{\rm star}$ and $E(B-V)_{\rm star}/E(B-V)_{\rm gas}$ with 16 regional/global properties, and for regions with different $\rm H{\alpha}$ surface brightnesses ($\Sigma_{\rm H\alpha}$). We find a stronger correlation between $E(B-V)_{\rm star}$ and $E(B-V)_{\rm gas}$ in regions of higher $\Sigma_{\rm H\alpha}$. Luminosity-weighted age ($t_L$) is found to be the property that is the most strongly correlated with $E(B-V)_{\rm star}$, and consequently with $E(B-V)_{\rm gas}-E(B-V)_{\rm star}$ and $E(B-V)_{\rm star}/E(B-V)_{\rm gas}$. At fixed $\Sigma_{\rm H\alpha}$, $\log_{10}t_L$ is linearly and negatively correlated with $E(B-V)_{\rm star}/E(B-V)_{\rm gas}$ at all ages. Gas-phase metallicity and ionization level are important for the attenuation in the gas. Our results indicate that the ionizing source for DIG regions is likely distributed in the outer-skirt of galaxies, while for HII regions our results can be well explained by the two-component dust model of Charlot & Fall (2000).

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Niu Li, Cheng Li, Houjun Mo, Shuang Zhou, Fu-heng Liang, Médéric Boquien, Niv Drory, José G. Fernández-Trincado, Michael Greener, Rogério Riffel. 2021-03-01. Estimating dust attenuation from galactic spectra. II. Stellar and gas attenuation in star-forming and diffuse ionized gas regions in MaNGA. https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357%2Fac0973

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