| Issue |
A&A
Volume 679, November 2023
|
|
|---|---|---|
| Article Number | L2 | |
| Number of page(s) | 7 | |
| Section | Letters to the Editor | |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/202347771 | |
| Published online | 31 October 2023 | |
Letter to the Editor
Uncovering the MIR emission of quiescent galaxies with JWST⋆
1
Cosmic Dawn Center (DAWN), Denmark
2
DTU Space, Technical University of Denmark, Elektrovej 327, 2800 Kgs. Lyngby, Denmark
e-mail: dblse@space.dtu.dk
3
Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, Jagtvej 128, 2200 Copenhagen, Denmark
4
Université Paris-Saclay, Université Paris Cité, CEA, CNRS, AIM, 91191 Gif-sur-Yvette, France
5
Kapteyn Astronomical Institute, University of Groningen, PO Box 800 9700 AV Groningen, The Netherlands
6
European Southern Observatory, Karl-Schwarzschild-Str. 2, 85748 Garching, Germany
7
Institute of Astrophysics, Foundation for Research and Technology-Hellas (FORTH), Heraklion 70013, Greece
8
School of Sciences, European University Cyprus, Diogenes street, Engomi, 1516 Nicosia, Cyprus
9
National Observatory of Athens, Institute for Astronomy, Astrophysics, Space Applications and Remote Sensing, Ioannou Metaxa and Vasileos Pavlou, 15236 Athens, Greece
10
Department of Astrophysics, Astronomy & Mechanics, School of Physics, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, 54124 Thessaloniki, Greece
11
Astrophysics, Department of Physics, University of Oxford, Keble Road, Oxford OX1 3RH, UK
12
DARK, Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, Jagtvej 128, 2200 Copenhagen, Denmark
13
Instituto de Física, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso, Casilla, 4059 Valparaíso, Chile
Received:
21
August
2023
Accepted:
2
October
2023
We present a study of the mid-IR (MIR) emission of quiescent galaxies (QGs) beyond the local universe. Using deep JWST imaging in the SMACS-0723 cluster field we identify a mass-limited (M* > 109 M⊙) sample of intermediate redshift QGs (0.2 < z < 0.7) and perform modelling of their rest-frame UV to MIR photometry. We find that QGs exhibit a range of MIR spectra that are composed of a stellar continuum and a dust component that is 1–2 orders of magnitude fainter than that of star-forming galaxies. The observed scatter in the MIR spectra, especially at λrest > 5 μm, can be attributed to different dust continuum levels and/or the presence of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) features. The latter would indicate enhanced 11.3 and 12.7 μm PAH strengths with respect to those at 6.2 and 7.7 μm, consistent with the observed spectra of local ellipticals and indicative of soft radiation fields. Finally, we augment the average UV to MIR spectrum of the population with cold dust and gas emission in the far-IR/millimetre, and construct a panchromatic UV to radio SED that can serve as a template for the future exploration of the interstellar medium of z > 0 QGs with ALMA and JWST.
Key words: galaxies: ISM / galaxies: photometry / dust / extinction
Publicly available at https://georgiosmagdis.github.io/software/
© The Authors 2023
Open Access article, published by EDP Sciences, under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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