An Investigation of the Current Star Formation Rate of Star-forming Galaxies at z < 0.5 with FADO

Yaosong Yu, Qihang Chen, Liang Jing

Published 2024-04-11Version 1

The star formation rate (SFR) is a crucial astrophysical tracer for understanding the formation and evolution of galaxies, determining the interaction between interstellar medium properties and star formation. The mainstream approach to study the stellar content in galaxies relies on pure stellar population synthesis models. However, these methods fail to account for the contamination of SFR caused by nebular gas radiation. Recent studies have indicated that neglecting nebular radiation contamination appears to be non-negligible in galaxies with intense star-forming activities and at relatively high redshifts, potentially leading to overestimation of stellar masses. However, there is currently limited targeted research, particularly regarding galaxies at higher redshifts (z < 0.5). In this investigation, we employ the BPT diagram to select a sample of 2575 star-formation galaxies (SFG) from the SDSS-DR18 dataset, all within specified signal-to-noise ratio (S/N) ranges. Using the spectroscopic fitting tool FADO, which is capable of excluding nebular radiation contributions in spectral fitting, we conduct a tentative investigation of the SFR of star-forming galaxies in SDSS- DR18 with redshifts z < 0.5. Our results show that 45% of the samples show H{\alpha}{\lambda}6563 obtained from FADO fitting to be smaller than that derived solely from the pure stellar population synthesis model qsofitmore, particularly pronounced between redshifts 0.2 and 0.4. We find that the contribution of nebulae is significant and exhibits an evolutionary trend with redshift. We anticipate that by combining optical and near-infrared spectral data, the influence of nebulae may become more prominent in star-forming galaxies at higher redshifts.