Star formation in unperturbed LIRGs

MIRABEL IF

Mexico

Congreso; XIII Latin American Regional IAU Meetings; 2011

Asociacion Mexicana de Astronomía, IAU

Luminous infrared galaxies (LIRGs) are galaxies with L_{FIR} > 10^11 L_{sun} (Sanders & Mirabel 1996). For a star-forming galaxy to emit at a LIRG level, it must have a very high star formation rate (SFR). In the local Universe, the star formation (SF) is primarily triggered by interactions. However, at intermediate redshift, a large fraction of LIRGs are disk galaxies with little sign of recent merger activity (Zheng et al. 2004). The question arises whether the intermediate redshift LIRGs are ``triggered'' or experiencing ``normal'', if elevated, SF. Understanding these SF processes is important since this type of systems may have contributed to 20% or more of the cosmic star-formation rate in the early Universe (Blain & Phillips 2002).