A Spectroscopically Calibrated Prescription for Extracting PAH Flux from JWST MIRI Imaging

TL;DR

This paper presents a calibrated method to estimate PAH fluxes at 7.7 and 11.3 microns from JWST MIRI broadband images, enabling accurate flux measurements with improved spatial coverage.

Contribution

A new prescription for extracting PAH fluxes from JWST MIRI imaging data, calibrated against spectral measurements across diverse galaxy environments.

Findings

PAH 7.7 micron flux estimates agree within ~7% with spectral fits.

PAH 11.3 micron flux estimates agree within ~5% with spectral fits.

Optimal filter combinations for accurate PAH flux extraction identified.

Abstract

We introduce a prescription for estimating the flux of the 7.7 micron and 11.3 micron\ 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 (GOALS) 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 micron, the best combination of filters is F560W, F770W, and either F1500W or F2100W, and the best for PAH 11.3 micron 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 micron, respectively.