Stellar Populations of Early-type Galaxies with Mid-Infrared Excess Emission

TL;DR

This study investigates early-type galaxies with mid-infrared excess emission, revealing recent star formation within the last 1-5 billion years using spectral analysis and mid-IR diagnostics.

Contribution

It demonstrates that mid-infrared emission effectively traces recent star formation in quiescent early-type galaxies, providing new insights into their stellar population history.

Findings

ETGs with mid-IR excess have 4-11% young and intermediate-age stars.

Mid-IR colors correlate strongly with spectral features of recent star formation.

Recent star formation occurred within the last 1-5 Gyr in these galaxies.

Abstract

We present a stellar population analysis of quiescent (without H$\alpha$ emission) and bright ($M_{r}$ $<$ $-$21.5) early-type galaxies (ETGs) with recent star formation. The ETGs are selected from a spectroscopic sample of SDSS galaxies at 0.04 $<$ $z$ $<$ 0.11 with {\it WISE} mid-infrared (IR) and {\it GALEX} near-ultraviolet (UV) emissions. We stack the optical spectra of ETGs with different amounts of mid-IR and near-UV excess emissions to measure the strength of 4000 \AA{} break $D_{n}$4000 and the width of Balmer absorption line H$\delta_{A}$ that are indicative of recent ($\sim$1 Gyr) star formation activity. The {\it WISE} [3.4]$-$[12] colors show stronger correlations with the spectral features than NUV$-r$ colors. We fit to the stacked spectra with a spectral fitting code, STARLIGHT, and find that the mass fraction of young ($\leq$1 Gyr) and intermediate-age ($\sim$1$-$5 Gyr) stars in the ETGs with mid-IR excess emission is $\sim$4$-$11\%, depending on the template spectrum used for the fit. These results show that the ETGs with mid-IR excess emission have experienced star formation within the last 1$-$5 Gyr and that the mid-IR emission is a useful diagnostic tool for probing recent star formation activity in ETGs.