FIR measurements of Ly-alpha emitters at z<1.0: dust attenuation from PACS-Herschel.

Ratio between total infrared and NUV luminosities against total  infrared luminosity for star-forming GALEX-LAEs. Right vertical axis  (dust attenuation) was built by using the calibration of  Buat et al. (2005). Yellow dots are data of nearby galaxies ta
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One remaining open question regarding the physical properties of  Lyaemitters (LAEs) is their dust content and its evolution  with redshift. The variety of results is large and with those reported  by now is difficult to establish clear relations between dust, other  fundamental parameters of galaxies (star-formation rate, metallicity  or age) and redshift. In this Letter, we report Herschel  PACS-100mm, PACS-160mm and Spitzer MIPS-24mm  detections of a sample of spectroscopically GALEX-selected LAEs at  z~0.3 and~1.0. Five out of ten and one out of two LAEs are detected in, at least, one PACS band at z~0.3 and~1.0z,  respectively. These measurements have a great importance given that they allow us to quantify, for the first time, the dust content of  LAEs from direct FIR observations. MIPS-24mm detections allow us to determine IR properties of the PACS-undetected LAEs. We obtain that mid-IR/FIR detected star-forming (SF) LAEs at z~0.3 have dust  content within 0.75 ≤ A1200Å ≤ 2.0, with a  median value of A1200Å ~1.1. This range broadens  out to 0.75 ≤ A1200Å ≤ 2.5 when considering  those LAEs at z~1.0. Only one SF LAE is undetected both in  MIPS-24mm and PACS, with 0.75 ≤ A1200Å ≤ 2.5. These  results seem to be larger than those reported for high-redshift LAEs  and, therefore, although an evolutionary trend is not clearly seen, it  could point out that low-redshift LAEs are dustier than high-redshift  ones. However, the diverse methods used could introduce a systematic  offset in the results.

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