UV Spectral Slope and Nebular Dust Attenuation in Dwarf Galaxies at $1.4<z<2.6$

Abstract

We analyze nebular dust attenuation and its correlation with stellar mass ($M_{*}$) and UV spectral slope ($\beta$) in 33 lensed, low-mass star-forming galaxies at $1.4\leq z \leq 2.6$, using Keck/MOSFIRE rest-frame optical spectroscopy. Located behind three massive lensing galaxy clusters Abell 1689, MACS J1149.5+2223, and MACS J0717.5+3745, galaxies in our sample have a median stellar mass of $\log(M_{*}/M_{\odot})=8.3$ and an intrinsic UV absolute magnitude range of $-20.9<M_{UV}<-13$. We measure nebular dust attenuation via Balmer optical depth ($\tau_{B}$) defined as the H$\alpha$/H$\beta$ ratio. We also derive physical properties from Hubble Space Telescope multi-wavelength photometry and construct composite spectra using median stacking in bins of $M_{*}$ and $\beta$. We find that the $\tau_{B}-\beta$ relation for the dwarf galaxies in this study is best represented by SMC dust curve. This is consistent with previous studies of low-metallicity galaxies at similar redshifts, which show a steep attenuation curve similar to the SMC curve, in contrast to high-metallicity and more massive galaxies that exhibit a much shallower dust attenuation curve. We also investigate the relationship between nebular dust attenuation and stellar mass, $E(B-V)_{nebular}-M_{*}$, down to $\log(M_{*}/M_{\odot})\sim 7$. We demonstrate that this relation does not notably evolve with redshift and is consistent with what has been observed for local SDSS galaxies at similar low stellar masses.