The Current Star Formation Rate of the Local Universe

Abstract

The Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM) Survey is a long-term project aiming at finding and analysing star-forming galaxies detected by their H$\alpha$ emission in Schmidt objective-prism plates. The instrumental set-up limits the volume of the Universe surveyed to a redshift $z\lesssim0.045$. So far we have discovered several hundred emission-line galaxies (ELGs) undergoing star formation at a wide range of levels. Analyzing a complete sample of ELGs from the UCM survey we have computed the H$\alpha$ luminosity function for the star-forming galaxies in the surveyed volume of the Universe. A Schechter function provides a good fit to the H$\alpha$ luminosity function with the following parameters: $\alpha = -1.3\pm0.2$; $L^*({\rm H}\alpha) = 10^{42.15\pm0.08} $erg$ $s$^{-1}$ and $\phi^*=10^{-3.2\pm0.2} $Mpc$^{-3}$ for $H_0 = 50 $km$ $s$^{-1} $Mpc$^{-1}$. Integrating over the full range of luminosities, we obtain an H$\alpha$ luminosity density of $10^{39.1\pm0.2} $erg$ $s$^{-1} $Mpc$^{-3}$. Using the H$\alpha$ emission as a star formation rate (SFR) estimator, this translates into a SFR density for the Local Universe of $0.013^{+0.007}_{-0.005} M_{\odot} $yr$^{-1} $Mpc$^{-3}$ in star-forming galaxies with $EW($H$\alpha+$[NII]$)>10$\AA and $z\lesssim0.045$, for a Scalo Initial Mass Function. This is the first observational determination of this quantity, which will provide a direct test of current galaxy formation and evolution models.