Stellar Mass Calibrations for Local Low-Mass Galaxies
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| Main Authors: | , , , , , , , , , , , , |
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| Format: | Preprint |
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2024
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| author | Reyes, Mithi A. C. de los Asali, Yasmeen Wechsler, Risa Geha, Marla Mao, Yao-Yuan Kado-Fong, Erin Pucha, Ragadeepika Grant, William Gandhi, Pratik J. Manwadkar, Viraj Engelhardt, Anna Munshi, Ferah Wang, Yunchong |
| author_facet | Reyes, Mithi A. C. de los Asali, Yasmeen Wechsler, Risa Geha, Marla Mao, Yao-Yuan Kado-Fong, Erin Pucha, Ragadeepika Grant, William Gandhi, Pratik J. Manwadkar, Viraj Engelhardt, Anna Munshi, Ferah Wang, Yunchong |
| contents | The stellar masses of galaxies are measured using integrated light via several methods -- however, few of these methods were designed for low-mass ($M_{\star}\lesssim10^{8}\rm{M_{\odot}}$) "dwarf" galaxies, whose properties (e.g., stochastic star formation, low metallicity) pose unique challenges for estimating stellar masses. In this work, we quantify the precision and accuracy at which stellar masses of low-mass galaxies can be recovered using UV/optical/IR photometry. We use mock observations of 469 low-mass galaxies from a variety of models, including both semi-empirical models (GRUMPY and UniverseMachine-SAGA) and cosmological baryonic zoom-in simulations (MARVELous Dwarfs and FIRE-2), to test literature color-$M_\star/L$ relations and multi-wavelength spectral energy distribution (SED) mass estimators. We identify a list of "best practices" for measuring stellar masses of low-mass galaxies from integrated photometry. We find that literature color-$M_\star/L$ relations are often unable to capture the bursty star formation histories (SFHs) of low-mass galaxies, and we develop an updated prescription for stellar mass based on $g-r$ color that is better able to recover stellar masses for the bursty low-mass galaxies in our sample (with ~0.1 dex precision). SED fitting can also precisely recover stellar masses of low-mass galaxies, but this requires thoughtful choices about the form of the assumed SFH: parametric SFHs can underestimate stellar mass by as much as ~0.4 dex, while non-parametric SFHs recover true stellar masses with insignificant offset (-0.03$\pm$0.11 dex). Finally, we also caution that non-informative (wide) dust attenuation priors may introduce $M_\star$ uncertainties of up to ~0.6 dex. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2409_03959 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2024 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Stellar Mass Calibrations for Local Low-Mass Galaxies Reyes, Mithi A. C. de los Asali, Yasmeen Wechsler, Risa Geha, Marla Mao, Yao-Yuan Kado-Fong, Erin Pucha, Ragadeepika Grant, William Gandhi, Pratik J. Manwadkar, Viraj Engelhardt, Anna Munshi, Ferah Wang, Yunchong Astrophysics of Galaxies The stellar masses of galaxies are measured using integrated light via several methods -- however, few of these methods were designed for low-mass ($M_{\star}\lesssim10^{8}\rm{M_{\odot}}$) "dwarf" galaxies, whose properties (e.g., stochastic star formation, low metallicity) pose unique challenges for estimating stellar masses. In this work, we quantify the precision and accuracy at which stellar masses of low-mass galaxies can be recovered using UV/optical/IR photometry. We use mock observations of 469 low-mass galaxies from a variety of models, including both semi-empirical models (GRUMPY and UniverseMachine-SAGA) and cosmological baryonic zoom-in simulations (MARVELous Dwarfs and FIRE-2), to test literature color-$M_\star/L$ relations and multi-wavelength spectral energy distribution (SED) mass estimators. We identify a list of "best practices" for measuring stellar masses of low-mass galaxies from integrated photometry. We find that literature color-$M_\star/L$ relations are often unable to capture the bursty star formation histories (SFHs) of low-mass galaxies, and we develop an updated prescription for stellar mass based on $g-r$ color that is better able to recover stellar masses for the bursty low-mass galaxies in our sample (with ~0.1 dex precision). SED fitting can also precisely recover stellar masses of low-mass galaxies, but this requires thoughtful choices about the form of the assumed SFH: parametric SFHs can underestimate stellar mass by as much as ~0.4 dex, while non-parametric SFHs recover true stellar masses with insignificant offset (-0.03$\pm$0.11 dex). Finally, we also caution that non-informative (wide) dust attenuation priors may introduce $M_\star$ uncertainties of up to ~0.6 dex. |
| title | Stellar Mass Calibrations for Local Low-Mass Galaxies |
| topic | Astrophysics of Galaxies |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.03959 |