Low- and high-redshift H II starburst galaxies obey different luminosity-velocity dispersion relations

Abstract: To determine whether or not H II starburst galaxies (H IIG) are standardizable candles, we study the correlation between the H$\beta$ luminosity ($L$) and the velocity dispersion ($\sigma$) of the ionized gas from H IIG measurements by simultaneously constraining the $L-\sigma$ relation parameters and the cosmological model parameters. We investigate six flat and nonflat relativistic dark energy cosmological models. We find that low-redshift and high-redshift H IIG data subsets are standardizable but obey different $L-\sigma$ relations. Current H IIG data are too sparse and too non-uniformly distributed in redshift to allow for a determination of why the samples follow different relations, but it could be caused by the high-redshift sample containing relatively fewer intrinsically dimmer sources (Malmquist bias) or it could be a consequence of H IIG evolution. Until this issue is better understood, H IIG data cosmological constraints must be treated with caution.