MEGA and SMILES Find Fewer Dusty Galaxies than Expected at Cosmic Noon

Bren E. Backhaus; Allison Kirkpatrick; Kurt Hamblin; Kaila Ronayne; Micaela B. Bagley; Steven L. Finkelstein; Dale D. Kocevski; Jeyhan S. Kartaltepe; Anton M. Koekemoer; Erini Lambrides; Casey Papovich; Gregory Troiani; Guang Yang

arXiv · 2606.17146

MEGA and SMILES Find Fewer Dusty Galaxies than Expected at Cosmic Noon

Bren E. Backhaus·Allison Kirkpatrick·Kurt Hamblin·Kaila Ronayne·Micaela B. Bagley·Steven L. Finkelstein·Dale D. Kocevski·Jeyhan S. Kartaltepe·Anton M. Koekemoer·Erini Lambrides·Casey Papovich·Gregory Troiani·Guang Yang

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Abstract

We present infrared (IR) luminsosity functions (LFs) and resulting star formation rate densities using the JWST Mid-infrared Instrument (MIRI) observations from the MIRI EGS Galaxy and AGN (MEGA) survey and Systematic MIRI Legacy Extragalactic Survey (SMILES). JWST allows us to perform a robust analysis on the faint end of the IR LF beyond the local universe. We directly measure the 7.7$\mu$m polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) feature using either F1000W, F1500W, or F2100W photometry. This results in a sample of 634 galaxies across the two surveys covering an area of 105 arcmin$^2$ ($\sim$70 in the EGS and $\sim35$ in the GOODS-S/HUDF fields) and spanning $0.2<z<2$. We convert the 7.7$\mu$m PAH luminosity to total IR luminosity, resulting in LFs that are two orders of magnitude fainter than previous studies. In contrast to previous extrapolations based on shallower observations, we find a strong flattening in the faint end of the LF with an average slope of $\alpha\sim0.147$. This indicates that less luminous galaxies do not have as much dust obscured star formation as predicted. We measure the star formation rate density (SFRD) by integrating our new IR LFs and find a slightly lower SFRD in all redshift bins than previous studies made with ALMA, Herschel, and Spitzer. We also measure the contribution to the SFRD as a function of luminosity and confirm that LIRGs and ULIRGs remain the dominant contributors to the dust-obscured star formation at $z\sim1-2$.

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Bren E. Backhaus, Allison Kirkpatrick, Kurt Hamblin, Kaila Ronayne, Micaela B. Bagley, Steven L. Finkelstein, Dale D. Kocevski, Jeyhan S. Kartaltepe, Anton M. Koekemoer, Erini Lambrides, Casey Papovich, Gregory Troiani, Guang Yang. 2026-06-15. MEGA and SMILES Find Fewer Dusty Galaxies than Expected at Cosmic Noon. https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.17146

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