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Being WISE II: Reducing the Influence of Star formation History on the Mass-to-Light Ratio of Quiescent Galaxies

Norris, M.A.; Van de Ven, G.; Schinnerer, E.; Crain, R.A.; Meidt, S.; Groves, B.; Bower, R.G.; Furlong, M.; Schaller, M.; Schaye, J.; Theuns, T.

Being WISE II: Reducing the Influence of Star formation History on the Mass-to-Light Ratio of Quiescent Galaxies Thumbnail


Authors

M.A. Norris

G. Van de Ven

E. Schinnerer

R.A. Crain

S. Meidt

B. Groves

R.G. Bower

M. Furlong

M. Schaller

J. Schaye



Abstract

Stellar population synthesis models can now reproduce the photometry of old stellar systems (age > 2 Gyr) in the near-infrared (NIR) bands at 3.4 and 4.6μm (WISE W1 & W2 or IRAC 1 & 2). In this paper we derive stellar mass-to-light ratios for these and optical bands, and confirm that the NIR M/L shows dramatically reduced sensitivity to both age and metallicity compared to optical bands, and further, that this behavior leads to significantly more robust stellar masses for quiescent galaxies with [Fe/H] > -0.5 regardless of star formation history (SFH). We then use realistic early-type galaxy SFHs and metallicity distributions from the EAGLE simulations of galaxy formation to investigate two methods to determine the appropriate M/L for a galaxy: 1) We show that the uncertainties introduced by an unknown SFH can be largely removed using a spectroscopically inferred luminosity-weighted age and metallicity for the population to select the appropriate single stellar population (SSP) equivalent M/L. Using this method, the maximum systematic error due to SFH on the M/L of an early-type galaxy is < 4% at 3.4 μm and typical uncertainties due to errors in the age and metallicity create scatter of ≲13%. The equivalent values for optical bands are more than 2-3 times greater, even before considering uncertainties associated with internal dust extinction. 2) We demonstrate that if the EAGLE SFHs and metallicities accurately reproduce the true properties of early-type galaxies, the use of an iterative approach to select a mass dependent M/L can provide even more accurate stellar masses for early-type galaxies, with typical uncertainties < 9%.

Citation

Norris, M., Van de Ven, G., Schinnerer, E., Crain, R., Meidt, S., Groves, B., …Theuns, T. (2016). Being WISE II: Reducing the Influence of Star formation History on the Mass-to-Light Ratio of Quiescent Galaxies. Astrophysical Journal, 832(2), Article 198. https://doi.org/10.3847/0004-637x/832/2/198

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Aug 25, 2016
Online Publication Date Dec 1, 2016
Publication Date Dec 1, 2016
Deposit Date Feb 27, 2017
Publicly Available Date Mar 29, 2024
Journal Astrophysical Journal
Print ISSN 0004-637X
Electronic ISSN 1538-4357
Publisher American Astronomical Society
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 832
Issue 2
Article Number 198
DOI https://doi.org/10.3847/0004-637x/832/2/198

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Copyright Statement
© 2016. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.





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