AAS 199th meeting, Washington, DC, January 2002
Session 16. Cosmology and Lensing
Display, Monday, January 7, 2002, 9:20am-6:30pm, Exhibit Hall

## [16.06] Testing the Application of IRX-\beta to High Redshift Galaxies

M. Seibert, T. Heckman, G.R. Meurer (JHU)

Starburst galaxies are the likely analogs to the population of Lyman break galaxies at high redshift (z=2-4). It is known that local starburst galaxies exhibit a correlation between their UV spectral slope (\beta; equivalent to UV color) and their infrared excess (IRX; ratio of far-IR to far-UV). This relationship indicates that dust surrounds starburst regions and can be modeled to provide an estimate of the UV extinction as a simple function of the UV color. However, due to the lack of far-IR data for high redshift galaxies, it is unclear whether or not the IRX-\beta relationship is meaningful for high redshift galaxies.

In an effort to test the validity of applying the IRX-\beta relationship to high redshift galaxies, we present predictions of the X-ray emission for a sample of Lyman break galaxies. Specifically, we estimate the far-IR luminosity (LFIR) using IRX-\beta and the X-ray luminosity (LX) from the LX-LFIR correlation for starbursts. These results are compared to current X-ray constraints.