Mapping Dust Attenuation at Kiloparsec Scales. III. The 2175Å Bump

Abstract

We combine the SwiM_v4.2 Swift/UVOT+MaNGA catalog with 2MASS $K_s$ imaging to map the 2175Å attenuation bump at kiloparsec scales in nearby galaxies. We use two complementary estimators: an ultraviolet-to-near-infrared attenuation-curve method, yielding $A_{bump}^{UOIR}$ and $B$ for 2487 high-continuum-S/N spaxels, and the NUV-only method of Battisti et al. (2025), yielding $A_{bump}^{NUV}$ and $k_{bump}$ for 7934 spaxels. The two absolute bump estimates agree well where they overlap. We compare bump strength with local stellar-population, emission-line, attenuation-curve, and geometric diagnostics after separating star-forming (SF) and non-SF regions. The strongest bumps occur at low specific H$α$ surface brightness, $Σ_{\text{H}α}/Σ_\ast$, especially in non-SF regions, where this ratio traces ionized-gas emission per unit stellar mass rather than sSFR. The bump also weakens with EW(H$α$) and strengthens with $D_n4000$ and stellar age. In contrast, metallicity, inclination, galactocentric radius, $A_V$, and optical attenuation-curve slope are secondary predictors. The absolute strength $A_{bump}^{NUV}$ increases with $Σ_{\text{H}α}$ and $Σ_\ast$, while the relative strengths $k_{bump}$ and $B$ do not, indicating that absolute bump amplitude partly follows dust column whereas normalized strengths better trace effective bump prominence. These results support local radiation-field processing of the 2175Å carriers.