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Recovering Stellar Population Properties and Redshifts from Broad-Band Photometry of Simulated Galaxies: Lessons for SED Modeling

We present a detailed analysis of our ability to determine stellar masses, ages, reddening and extinction values, and star formation rates of high-redshift galaxies by modeling broad-band SEDs with stellar population synthesis. In order to do so, we computed synthetic optical-to-NIR SEDs for model galaxies taken from hydrodynamical merger simulations placed at redshifts 1.5 < z < 3. Viewed under different angles and during different evolutionary phases, the simulations represent a wide variety of galaxy types (disks, mergers, spheroids). We show that simulated galaxies span a wide range in SEDs and color, comparable to these of observed galaxies. In all star-forming phases, dust attenuation has a large effect on colors, SEDs, and fluxes. The broad-band SEDs were then fed to a standard SED modeling procedure and resulting stellar population parameters were compared to their true values. Disk galaxies generally show a decent median correspondence between the true and estimated mass and age, but suffer from large uncertainties. During the merger itself, we find larger offsets (e.g., log M_recovered - log M_true = -0.13^{+0.10}_{-0.14}). E(B-V) values are generally recovered well, but the estimated total visual absorption Av is consistently too low, increasingly so for larger optical depths. Since the largest optical depths occur during the phases of most intense star formation, it is for the highest SFRs that we find the largest underestimates. The masses, ages, E(B-V), Av, and SFR of merger remnants (spheroids) are very well reproduced. We discuss possible biases in SED modeling results caused by mismatch between the true and template star formation history, dust distribution, metallicity variations and AGN contribution.