2014ApJ...797...54K

We present a new catalog of 118 ultraluminous infrared galaxies (ULIRGs) and one hyperluminous infrared galaxy (HLIRG) by cross-matching the AKARI all-sky survey with the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 10 (SDSS DR10) and the final data release of the Two-Degree Field Galaxy Redshift Survey. Forty of the ULIRGs and one HLIRG are new identifications. We find that ULIRGs are interacting pair galaxies or ongoing or postmergers. This is consistent with the widely accepted view: ULIRGs are major mergers of disk galaxies. We confirm the previously known positive trend between the active galactic nucleus fraction and infrared luminosity. We show that ULIRGs have a large offset from the main sequence up to z ∼ 1; their offset from the z ∼ 2 "main sequence" is relatively smaller. We find a result consistent with the previous studies showing that, compared to local star-forming SDSS galaxies of similar mass, local ULIRGs have lower oxygen abundances. We demonstrate for the first time that ULIRGs follow the fundamental metallicity relation (FMR). The scatter of ULIRGs around the FMR (0.09 dex-0.5 dex) is comparable to the scatter of z ∼ 2-3 galaxies. We provide the largest local (0.050 <z < 0.487) ULIRG catalog with stellar masses, star-formation rates, gas metallicities, and optical colors.