CEERS: 7.7 μm PAH Star Formation Rate Calibration with JWST MIRI

• Published in: The Astrophysical journal 2024-07, Vol.970 (1), p.61
• Main Authors: Ronayne, Kaila, Papovich, Casey, Yang, Guang, Shen, Lu, Dickinson, Mark, Kennicutt, Robert, Alavi, Anahita, Arrabal Haro, Pablo, Bagley, Micaela B., Burgarella, Denis, Le Bail, Aurélien, Bell, Eric F., Cleri, Nikko J., Cole, Justin, Costantin, Luca, de la Vega, Alexander, Daddi, Emanuele, Elbaz, David, Finkelstein, Steven L., Grogin, Norman A., Holwerda, Benne W., Kartaltepe, Jeyhan S., Kirkpatrick, Allison, Koekemoer, Anton M., Lucas, Ray A., Magnelli, Benjamin, Mobasher, Bahram, Pérez-González, Pablo G., Prichard, Laura, Rafelski, Marc, Rodighiero, Giulia, Sunnquist, Ben, Teplitz, Harry I., Wang, Xin, Windhorst, Rogier A., Yung, L. Y. Aaron
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Accuracy; Aromatic hydrocarbons; Calibration; Cosmic dust; Dust; Emission; Emissions; Flux density; Galactic evolution; Galaxies; Galaxy distribution; Galaxy evolution; Hubble Space Telescope; Infrared galaxies; James Webb Space Telescope; Luminosity; Metallicity; Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons; Scattering; Space telescopes; Spectral energy distribution; Star & galaxy formation; Star formation; Star formation rate; Stars; Stellar populations; Tracers
• ISSN: 0004-637X; 1538-4357
• DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/ad5006

We test the relationship between UV-derived star formation rates (SFRs) and the 7.7 μ m polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon luminosities from the integrated emission of galaxies at z ∼ 0–2. We utilize multiband photometry covering 0.2–160 μ m from the Hubble Space Telescope, CFHT, JWST, Spitzer, and Herschel for galaxies in the Cosmic Evolution Early Release Science (CEERS) Survey. We perform spectral energy distribution (SED) modeling of these data to measure dust-corrected far-UV (FUV) luminosities, L FUV , and UV-derived SFRs. We then fit SED models to the JWST/MIRI 7.7–21 μ m CEERS data to derive rest-frame 7.7 μ m luminosities, L 770 , using the average flux density in the rest-frame MIRI F770W bandpass. We observe a correlation between L 770 and L FUV , where log L 770 ∝ ( 1.27 ± 0.04 ) log L FUV . L 770 diverges from this relation for galaxies at lower metallicities, lower dust obscuration, and for galaxies dominated by evolved stellar populations. We derive a “single-wavelength” SFR calibration for L 770 that has a scatter from model estimated SFRs ( σ ΔSFR ) of 0.24 dex. We derive a “multiwavelength” calibration for the linear combination of the observed FUV luminosity (uncorrected for dust) and the rest-frame 7.7 μ m luminosity, which has a scatter of σ ΔSFR = 0.21 dex. The relatively small decrease in σ suggests this is near the systematic accuracy of the total SFRs using either calibration. These results demonstrate that the rest-frame 7.7 μ m emission constrained by JWST/MIRI is a tracer of the SFR for distant galaxies to this accuracy, provided the galaxies are dominated by star formation with moderate-to-high levels of attenuation and metallicity.