Papers › Understanding the Universal Dust Attenuation Scaling Relation of Star-Forming Galaxies
Understanding the Universal Dust Attenuation Scaling Relation of Star-Forming Galaxies
J. Qin, X. Z. Zheng, S. Wuyts, Z. Lv, M. Qiao, J. -S. Huang, F. S. Liu, A. Katsianis, V. Gonzalez, F. Bian, H. Xu, Z. Pan, W. Liu, Q. -H. Tan, F. X. An, D. D. Shi, Y. Zhang, R. Wen, S. Liu, C. Yang
The archive published only this paper's code-link row. Authors, date and abstract are from arXiv's metadata (CC0), read from the Kaggle arXiv metadata snapshot of 2026-09-12 where its title matched the archive's; the title is the archive's.
Star-forming galaxies (SFGs) adhere to a surprisingly tight scaling relation of dust attenuation parameterized by the infrared excess (IRX=L_(IR)/L_(UV)), being jointly determined by the star formation rate (SFR), galaxy size (Rₑ), metallicity (Z/Z_⊙) and axial ratio (b/a). We examine how these galaxy parameters determine the effective dust attenuation and give rise to the universal IRX relation, utilizing a simple two-component star-dust geometry model in which dust in the dense and diffuse interstellar medium (ISM) follows exponential mass density profiles, connected with but not necessarily identical to the stellar mass profiles. Meanwhile, empirical relations are adopted to link galaxy properties, including the gas--star formation relation, the dust-to-stellar size relation, as well as the dust-to-gas ratio versus metallicity relation. By fitting a large sample of local SFGs with the model, we obtain the best-fitting model parameters as a function of metallicity, showing that the two-component geometry model is able to successfully reproduce the dependence of IRX on SFR, Rₑ, b/a at given Z/Z_⊙, as well as the dependence of power-law indices on metallicity. Moreover, we also retrieve constraints on the model geometry parameters, including the optical depth of birth clouds (BCs), BC-to-total dust mass fraction, BC covering factor of UV-emitting stars, and star-to-total dust disc radius ratio, which all evolve with galaxy metallicity. Finally, a consistent picture of how the star-dust geometry in SFGs evolves with galaxy metallicity is discussed.
Code
Repository list and official/mentioned flags are the archive's, frozen 2025-07-28. Reachability, where shown, is from one Syntology probe window (2026-09-16 to 2026-09-18); repositories not probed show nothing. GitHub stars are not tracked.
Code Syntology ran Syntology
Not run by Syntology. Nothing on this page verifies that the listed code works.
Results from the paper archive 2025-07-28
No leaderboard rows for this paper in the archive.
Report a problem or propose a change · a person checks every report against the paper or source before anything changes; decisions are listed on /corrections