SPIDER. V. MEASURING SYSTEMATIC EFFECTS IN EARLY-TYPE GALAXY STELLAR MASSES FROM PHOTOMETRIC SPECTRAL ENERGY DISTRIBUTION FITTING

We present robust statistical estimates of the accuracy of early-type galaxy stellar masses derived from spectral energy distribution (SED) fitting as functions of various empirical and theoretical assumptions. Using large samples consisting of similar to 40,000 galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS; ugriz), of which similar to 5000 are also in the UKIRT Infrared Deep Sky Survey (YJHK), with spectroscopic redshifts in the range 0.05 <= z <= 0.095, we test the reliability of some commonly used stellar population models and extinction laws for computing stellar masses. Spectroscopic ages (t), metallicities (Z), and extinctions (A(V)) are also computed from fits to SDSS spectra using various population models. These external constraints are used in additional tests to estimate the systematic errors in the stellar masses derived from SED fitting, where t, Z, and A(V) are typically left as free parameters. We find reasonable agreement in mass estimates among stellar population models, with variation of the initial mass function and extinction law yielding systematic biases on the mass of nearly a factor of two, in agreement with other studies. Removing the near-infrared bands changes the statistical bias in mass by only similar to 0.06 dex, adding uncertainties of similar to 0.1 dex at the 95% CL. In contrast, we find that removing an ultraviolet band is more critical, introducing 2 sigma uncertainties of similar to 0.15 dex. Finally, we find that the stellar masses are less affected by the absence of metallicity and/or dust extinction knowledge. However, there is a definite systematic offset in the mass estimate when the stellar population age is unknown, up to a factor of 2.5 for very old (12 Gyr) stellar populations. We present the stellar masses for our sample, corrected for the measured systematic biases due to photometrically determined ages, finding that age errors produce lower stellar masses by similar to 0.15 dex, with errors of similar to 0.02 dex at the 95% CL for the median stellar age subsample.