A Spectroscopically Calibrated Prescription for Extracting Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbon Flux from JWST MIRI Imaging

April 2025 • 2025ApJ...983...79D

Authors • Donnelly, Grant P. • Lai, Thomas S. -Y. • Armus, Lee • Díaz-Santos, Tanio • Larson, Kirsten L. • Barcos-Muñoz, Loreto • Bianchin, Marina • Bohn, Thomas • Böker, Torsten • Buiten, Victorine A. • Charmandaris, Vassilis • Evans, Aaron S. • Howell, Justin • Inami, Hanae • Kakkad, Darshan • Lenkić, Laura • Linden, Sean T. • Lofaro, Cristina M. • Malkan, Matthew A. • Medling, Anne M. • Privon, George C. • Ricci, Claudio • Smith, J. D. T. • Song, Yiqing • Stierwalt, Sabrina • van der Werf, Paul P. • U, Vivian

Abstract • We introduce a prescription for estimating the flux of the 7.7 μm and 11.3 μm polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) features from broadband JWST/MIRI images. Probing PAH flux with MIRI imaging data has advantages in field of view, spatial resolution, and sensitivity compared with MIRI spectral maps, but comparisons with spectra are needed to calibrate these flux estimations over a wide variety of environments. For 267 MIRI/MRS spectra from independent regions in the four luminous infrared galaxies (LIRGs) in the Great Observatories All-sky LIRG Survey Early Release Science program, we derive synthetic filter photometry and directly compare estimated PAH fluxes to those measured from detailed spectral fits. We find that for probing PAH 7.7 μm, the best combination of filters is F560W, F770W, and either F1500W or F2100W, and the best for PAH 11.3 μm is F560W, F1000W, F1130W, and F1500W. The prescription with these combinations yields predicted flux densities that typically agree with values from spectral decomposition within ∼7% and ∼5% for PAH 7.7 and 11.3 μm, respectively.

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