Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon luminous galaxies in JWST CEERS data
Abstract
It has been an unanswered question how many dusty galaxies have been undetected from the state-of-the-art observational surveys. JWST enables us to detect faint infrared (IR) galaxies that have prominent polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) features in the mid-IR wavelengths. PAH is a valuable tracer of star formation and dust properties in the mid-IR wavelength. The JWST Cosmic Evolution Early Release Science (CEERS) fields provide us with wavelength coverage from 7.7 to 21 μm using six photometric bands of the mid-IR instrument (MIRI). We have identified galaxies dominated by mid-IR emission from PAHs, termed PAH galaxies. From our multiband photometry catalogue, we selected 10 PAH galaxies displaying high flux ratios of log (S15/S10) > 0.8. The SED fitting analysis indicates that these galaxies are star-forming galaxies with total IR luminosities of 1010 ~ 1011.5 L⊙ at z ~1. The morphology of PAH galaxies does not show any clear signatures of major merging or interaction within the MIRI resolution. The majority of them are on the star-formation main sequence at z ~ 1. Our result demonstrates that JWST can detect PAH emissions from normal star-forming galaxies at z ~ 1, in addition to ultra-luminous infrared galaxies or luminous IR galaxies (LIRGs).
- Publication:
-
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
- Pub Date:
- February 2024
- DOI:
- 10.1093/mnras/stad3984
- arXiv:
- arXiv:2401.01043
- Bibcode:
- 2024MNRAS.52711882L
- Keywords:
-
- galaxies: photometry;
- galaxies: star formation;
- infrared: galaxies;
- Astrophysics - Astrophysics of Galaxies;
- Astrophysics - Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics
- E-Print:
- 12 pages, 20 figures, 4 tables. Accepted by MNRAS. A summary video is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtPaVTFM4f8&