VALES: III. The calibration between the dust continuum and interstellar gas content of star-forming galaxies

We present the calibration between the dust continuum luminosity and interstellar gas content obtained from the Valparaiso ALMA Line Emission Survey (VALES) sample of 67 main-sequence star-forming galaxies at 0.02 < z < 0.35. We use CO(1–0) observations from the Atacama Large Millimetre/submil...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Hughes, T.M., Ibar, E., Villaneuva, V., Aravena, M., Baes, M., Bourne, N., Cooray, A., Davies, L.J.M., Driver, S., Dunne, L., Dye, S., Eales, S., Furlanetto, C., Herrera-Camus, R., Ivison, R.J., van Kampen, E., Lara-Lopez, M.A., Maddox, S., Michałowski, M.J., Oteo, I., Smith, D., Smith, M.W.L., Valiante, E., van der Werf, Paul, Viaene, S., Xue, Y.Q.
Format: Article
Published: Oxford University Press 2017
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Online Access:https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/42250/
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Summary:We present the calibration between the dust continuum luminosity and interstellar gas content obtained from the Valparaiso ALMA Line Emission Survey (VALES) sample of 67 main-sequence star-forming galaxies at 0.02 < z < 0.35. We use CO(1–0) observations from the Atacama Large Millimetre/submillimetre Array to trace the molecular gas mass, MH2, and estimate the rest-frame monochromatic luminosity at 850 µm, Lν850, by extrapolating the dust continuum from MAGPHYS modelling of the far-ultraviolet to submillimetre spectral energy distribution sampled by the Galaxy And Mass Assembly survey. Adopting αCO = 6.5 (K km s−1 pc2)−1, the average ratio of Lν850 /MH2 = (6.4 ± 1.4)× 1019 erg s−1 Hz−1 M−1Θ, in excellent agreement with literature values. We obtain a linear fit of log10 (MH2/MΘ) = (0.92 ± 0.02) log10(Lν850 /erg s−1 Hz−1) − (17.31 ± 0.59). We provide relations between Lν850, MH2 and MISM when combining the VALES and literature samples, and adopting a Galactic αCO value.