Global Star Formation Rates and Dust Emission Over the Galaxy
  Interaction Sequence
  We measured and modeled the spectral energy distributions (SEDs) in 28 bands
from the ultraviolet to the far-infrared (FIR) for 31 interacting galaxies in
14 systems. The sample is drawn from the Spitzer Interacting Galaxy Survey,
which probes a range of galaxy interaction parameters at multiple wavelengths
with an emphasis on the infrared bands. The subset presented in this paper
consists of all galaxies for which FIR Herschel SPIRE observations are publicly
available. Our SEDs combine the Herschel photometry with multi-wavelength data
from Spitzer, GALEX, Swift UVOT, and 2MASS. While the shapes of the SEDs are
broadly similar across our sample, strongly interacting galaxies typically have
more mid-infrared emission relative to their near-infrared and FIR emission
than weakly or moderately interacting galaxies. We modeled the full SEDs to
derive host galaxy star formation rates (SFR), specific star formation rates
(sSFR), stellar masses, dust temperatures, dust luminosities, and dust masses.
We find increases in the dust luminosity and mass, SFR, and cold (15-25 K) dust
temperature as the interaction progresses from moderately to strongly
interacting and between non- interacting and strongly interacting galaxies. We
also find increases in the SFR between weakly and strongly interacting
galaxies. In contrast, the sSFR remains unchanged across all the interaction
stages. The SFR derived from the SED modeling agrees well with rates estimated
by proportionality relations that depend on infrared emission. (abridged)
