Dust Energy Balance

[mwls]

Hi all,

I would like to fit a SED with dust emission templates turned on. Can anyone confirm whether Prospector assumes an energy balance? (sorry, I haven't found it documented anywhere). If it does use an energy balance is it possible to turn the energy balance off? (i.e., make the dust emission fitting independent of any stellar templates).

Thanks!

[bd-j]

Hi, the energy balance is implemented in FSPS. There is not an easy way to turn it off; without it the stellar and dust emission are entirely decoupled. Depends a bit on what you are trying to do, but one way to effectively turn it off is to just provide no optical/NIR data, and fix all stellar parameters except stellar mass (which will provide a sort of normalization) and set dust2>0. Then you can fit just the dust emission parameters (and the normalization 'stellar mass' parameter), to the far-IR data only.

[mwls]

Thanks, that makes sense. I'm trying to fit pixel-by-pixel a nearby galaxy, but I know I'm on scales below where energy balance holds.