{
  "id": "1502.03843",
  "version": "v1",
  "published": "2015-02-12T22:00:05.000Z",
  "updated": "2015-02-12T22:00:05.000Z",
  "title": "Herschel-ATLAS: The Surprising Diversity of Dust-Selected Galaxies in the Local Submillimetre Universe",
  "authors": [
    "Christopher J R Clark",
    "Loretta Dunne",
    "Haley L Gomez",
    "Steven Maddox",
    "Pieter De Vis",
    "Matthew W L Smith",
    "Steven A Eales",
    "Maarten Baes",
    "George J Bendo",
    "Nathan Bourne",
    "Simon P Driver",
    "Simon Dye",
    "Christina Furlanetto",
    "Rob J Ivison",
    "Simon P Schofield",
    "Aaron S G Robotham",
    "Kate Rowlands",
    "Catherine Vlahakis",
    "Paul van der Werf",
    "Angus Wright",
    "Gianfranco de Zotti"
  ],
  "comment": "Submitted to Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society",
  "categories": [
    "astro-ph.GA"
  ],
  "abstract": "We present the properties of the first 250um blind sample of nearby galaxies (15 < D < 46 Mpc), from the Herschel Astrophysical Terahertz Large Area Survey (H-ATLAS). Herschel's sensitivity allows us to probe the faint end of the dust luminosity function for the first time, spanning a range of stellar mass (7.4 < log$_{10}$ M$_{\\star}$ < 11.3 M$_{\\odot}$), star formation activity (-11.8 < log$_{10}$ SSFR < -8.9 yr$^{-1}$), and gas fraction (3-96 per cent). Our representative sample of the local dusty Universe reveals great diversity, with 0.6 < FUV-Ks < 7.0 and representation across the Hubble Sequence. The median cold dust temperature is 14.6 K, colder than that in the HRS (18.5 K) and Planck ERCSC (17.7 K). The mean dust-to-stellar mass ratio (Md/M$_{\\star}$) in our sample is higher than in these surveys by a factor of 3.7 and 1.8 respectively. Counter-intuitively, we find that the more dust rich a galaxy (defined by Md/M$_{\\star}$), the lower its UV attenuation. Dust selection also produces a sample with a high median gas fraction of 52 per cent. From our volume-limited sample, we derive a dust mass volume density of (3.7 $\\pm$ 0.7) x 10$^{5}$ M$_{\\odot}$ Mpc$^{-3}$, a factor of 2 higher than derived previously by H-ATLAS and IRAS/SCUBA, but consistent with that derived by Planck (modulo large cosmic variance). Over half of this dust mass selected sample are very blue in FUV-Ks colour, with irregular and/or highly flocculent morphology. These very blue galaxies account for only 6 per cent of the stellar mass in our sample, but contain over 35 per cent of the dust mass. These are the most actively star forming galaxies in our sample, with the highest gas fractions and lowest attenuations. These galaxies appear to be immature, still in an early stage of converting their gas into stars; they should therefore provide valuable insights into the chemical evolution of young galaxies.",
  "revisions": [
    {
      "version": "v1",
      "updated": "2015-02-12T22:00:05.000Z"
    }
  ],
  "analyses": {
    "keywords": [
      "local submillimetre universe",
      "terahertz large area survey",
      "dust-selected galaxies",
      "astrophysical terahertz large area",
      "surprising diversity"
    ],
    "note": {
      "typesetting": "TeX",
      "pages": 0,
      "language": "en",
      "license": "arXiv",
      "status": "editable"
    }
  }
}