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# The Munich Near-Infrared Cluster Survey (MUNICS) – V. The evolution of the rest-frame 𝐾-band and 𝐽-band galaxy luminosity functions to 𝑧∼0.7

## 1 Introduction

The study of the luminosity function of galaxies at different wavelengths and at different cosmic epochs is one of the most important methods to address the problem of the formation and evolution of galaxies within observational cosmology.

During the last decades, most field galaxy surveys have been optically selected, mostly in the $`I`$ or $`B`$ band (see e.g. Ellis 1997 for a review). In recent years however, there has been growing interest in the study of near-infrared-selected samples of galaxies. Especially the $`K`$-band at wavelengths of roughly $`\lambda 2\mu \mathrm{m}`$ offers the unique opportunity to detect evolved galaxies, since the $`K`$-band light of galaxies is largely dominated by radiation from the evolved stellar population (Rix & Rieke 1993; Kauffmann & Charlot 1998; Brinchmann & Ellis 2000). Moreover, in the case of the $`K`$-band, the transformation which has to be applied to convert the observed flux of an object’s redshifted spectral energy distribution through a given filter to the corresponding rest-frame flux, the $`k(z)`$ correction, is much smaller – and indeed negative – than in the optical wavebands, and the variation of $`k(z)`$ corrections between different galaxy types is small. These effects reduce systematic errors introduced by applying $`k(z)`$ corrections during the construction of the luminosity function considerably. As another advantage of near-infrared selected surveys, the rest-frame $`K`$-band luminosity can be used to derive stellar masses for the galaxies, as has been done by Drory et al. (2001b, hereafter MUNICS III), for example. Obviously, this allows the direct study of the history of the assembly of stellar mass in the galaxies and thus helps to understand the mechanism of their formation.

The past ten years have seen a number of measurements of near-infrared luminosity functions, all of which are summarised in Tables 12 and 13. The easiest way to determine the $`K`$-band luminosity function of galaxies is by follow-up near-infrared photometry of existing, typically optically selected, galaxy redshift catalogues. Mobasher, Sharples & Ellis (1993) and Szokoly et al. (1998) have chosen this approach, and later on Loveday (2000) has presented the luminosity function at a median redshift $`z=0.051`$ from $`K`$-band imaging of $`b_J`$-selected galaxies from the Stromlo-APM Redshift Survey (Maddox et al., 1990; Loveday et al., 1996). Note that the use of optically-selected samples can lead to a bias against red (for example old or dusty) galaxies.

For near-infrared selected galaxy surveys, most measurements of the $`K`$-band luminosity function so far were based on local ($`z0.15`$) samples. Gardner et al. (1997) have calculated the $`K`$-band luminosity function at a median redshift $`z=0.14`$. Kochanek et al. (2001) have determined type-dependent luminosity functions at median redshift $`z=0.023`$ from 2MASS (Jarrett et al., 2000) and the CfA2 (Geller & Huchra, 1989) and UZC (Falco et al., 1999) catalogues. A similar strategy was adopted by Cole et al. (2001) who combined the photometric 2MASS data with the 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey (Folkes et al., 1999), and Balogh et al. (2001) who cross-correlate the 2MASS data with the Las Campanas Redshift Survey (Shectman et al., 1996). As will be shown below, there is good agreement between these determinations of the rest-frame $`K`$-band luminosity function in the local universe. However, Huang et al. (2002) have presented a measurement of the local $`K`$-band luminosity function from the Hawaii–AAO $`K`$-band Galaxy Redshift Survey, finding a slightly brighter $`M^{}`$ and a steeper faint-end slope, which they attribute to the influence of different redshift ranges of the local samples. They also note that their value for the faint-end slope is in better agreement with optical luminosity functions.

At higher redshifts, Glazebrook et al. (1995) derived the $`K`$-band luminosity function out to redshifts $`z0.8`$ and find evidence for a brightening of the characteristic luminosity at $`z>0.5`$. Cowie et al. (1996) present the evolution of the $`K`$-band luminosity function of galaxies in four redshift bins $`z[0,0.1]`$, $`z[0.1,0.2]`$, $`z[0.2,0.6]`$, and $`z[0.6,1.0]`$ based on a deep, but rather small spectroscopic sample, complemented by the shallower samples from Songaila et al. (1994). They find no evolution with redshift. Using our own, much larger sample of spectroscopically calibrated photometric redshifts from the MUNICS survey, we find mild evolution to redshift one, with a brightening of 0.5 to 0.7 mag, and a decrease in number density of about 25 per cent (Drory et al. 2003; hereafter MUNICS II).

The spectroscopic sample of $`K`$-band selected galaxies described in this paper enables us to derive the rest-frame $`K`$-band luminosity function of galaxies at redshifts $`z=0.2`$, $`z=0.4`$, and $`z=0.7`$ from data based on a survey much larger in area than the Hawaii Deep Fields (Cowie et al., 1996), making the luminosity function presented in this paper much less affected by cosmic variance.

Furthermore, the rest-frame $`J`$-band luminosity function at these redshifts is presented for the first time. So far, there are only two local measurements of the luminosity function in this band (Balogh et al., 2001; Cole et al., 2001).

The paper is organised as follows. Section 2 briefly describes the Munich Near-Infrared Cluster Survey (MUNICS), the selection of objects for spectroscopy, the observations, as well as the data reduction and the construction of the redshift catalogue. The properties of the spectroscopic sample are discussed in Section 3. Section 4 describes the $`K`$-band and $`J`$-band luminosity functions of galaxies as derived from the spectroscopic data, with a detailed discussion of the results in Section 5. Finally, Section 6 concludes this work with a summary of our results.

We assume $`\mathrm{\Omega }_M=0.3`$, $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }=0.7`$ throughout this paper. We write Hubble’s Constant as $`H_0=100h\mathrm{km}\mathrm{s}^1\mathrm{Mpc}^1`$, using $`h=0.60`$ unless explicit dependence on $`h`$ is given. For convenience, we write the apparent $`K^{}`$-band magnitude as $`m_K`$ in some places.

## 2 Spectroscopic observations

### 2.1 The Munich Near-Infrared Cluster Survey

The Munich Near-Infrared Cluster Survey (MUNICS) is a wide-field medium-deep survey in the near-infrared $`K^{}`$ and $`J`$ pass-bands which is fully described in Drory et al. (2001a; hereafter MUNICS I). In brief, the survey consists of a $`K^{}`$-selected catalogue down to $`K^{}19.5`$ (50 per cent completeness limit for point sources) covering an area of 1 square degree. Additionally, 0.35 square degrees have been observed in $`I`$, $`R`$, and $`V`$. $`B`$-band imaging has been recently completed for the same area and will be described elsewhere. The limiting magnitudes of this main part of the survey are 23.5 in $`V`$, 23.5 in $`R`$, 22.5 in $`I`$, and 21.5 in $`J`$. The magnitudes are in the Vega system and refer to 50% completeness for point sources. The fields used in this work are five randomly selected patches of sky (see Table 1 for details). The layout of the survey, the observations and data reduction are described in MUNICS I.

### 2.2 Selection of the spectroscopic sample

Objects for spectroscopic observations were chosen from the $`K`$-band selected photometric catalogue of MUNICS in five survey fields, the details of which can be found in Table 1 (see MUNICS I for a description of the field nomenclature).

Object selection for spectroscopy was based on two criteria. Firstly, we aimed at a $`K`$-band magnitude-limited sample. Due to the use of optical spectrographs, the appropriate $`K`$-band limit is determined by the typical colours of red galaxies (roughly $`RK4`$, see Fig. 5) and the limits of the optical spectrographs at the telescopes we used. Trying to keep the $`K`$-band completeness of the spectroscopic sample as high as possible yields sample limits of $`K17.5`$ for spectroscopic observations at the Calar Alto 3.5-m telescope and $`K19.0`$ for observations at the Very Large Telescope (VLT). Obviously, a small fraction of very red objects will be lost, but their number density is comparatively small anyway (see, for instance, Martini (2001) and references therein). Results on the few very red objects identified spectroscopically can be found in Section 3.8.

Secondly, in selecting objects for spectroscopy, we have tried to exclude stars. This was done using the image-based classification of objects into point-like objects and extended sources as described in MUNICS I.

To test this classification procedure, we have built up a small spectroscopic test sample of bright objects which was purely magnitude selected and therefore contains both stars and galaxies. The results of the comparison between image-based and spectroscopic classification show that our morphological approach is able to distinguish stars and galaxies with reasonable reliability. The results of this test are summarised in Table 2.

On a purely magnitude-limited sample containing all objects with $`K^{}16.5`$, all objects classified as point-like are indeed stars, and the stellar contamination is 20 per cent only. On the other hand, we can also use the complete spectroscopic catalogue to investigate the reliability of our classification method, yielding also very good agreement between spectral and morphological classification.

Thus our method to classify objects into point-like or extended sources can reliably reduce stellar contamination of the spectroscopic catalogue as long as the objects are not too faint. Pre-selecting our spectroscopic sample by image morphology results in a loss of less than 4 per cent of all galaxies which are classified as point-like, and in a 7 per cent contamination by stars.

### 2.3 Spectroscopic observations and data reduction

The largest part of the spectroscopic observations was carried out with the Multi-Object Spectrograph for Calar Alto (MOSCA) at the 3.5-m telescope at Calar Alto Observatory (Spain), and with FOcal Reducer and low-dispersion Spectrograph (FORS) 1 and 2 (Seifert et al., 1994) at the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT). Part of the sample was observed with the Low Resolution Spectrograph (LRS; Hill et al. 1998) at the Hobby-Eberly Telescope (HET) at McDonald Observatory, Texas, and with ESO Faint Object Spectrograph and Camera (EFOSC) 2 at the ESO 3.6-m telescope on La Silla (Chile). All observing runs are listed in Table 3.

MOSCA was used with the Green 500 grism and without any filter. MOSCA’s multi-object spectroscopy mode uses slit masks containing typically 20$`\mathrm{}`$25 slits of 1.5″ width. MOSCA is equipped with a 2048$`\times `$4096 pixel CCD with 15$`\mu `$m pixel size, yielding an effective area of 10′$`\times `$ 10′ usable for spectroscopy.

At the VLT, FORS1 offers 19 movable slit-lets, whereas FORS2 is equipped with a Mask Exchange Unit (MXU), which allows spectroscopy of a larger number of objects. For both instruments a slit width of 1″ was chosen. The CCD detectors are 2048$`\times `$2048 pixel in size with 24$`\mu `$m pixels, thus allowing a field of roughly 3′$`\times `$ 7′to be used for spectroscopy. Grism 300 I and filter OG590 was used for the observations

In multi-object spectroscopy mode, the LRS at HET provides 13 slit-lets of 1.5″ width. The spectra were obtained through grism 300 and filter GG385.

Finally, EFOSC2 at the ESO 3.6-m telescope was equipped with grism 11 and a slit-width of 1.0 ″. The technical characteristics of all instruments used for the spectroscopic observations are summarised in Table 4.

The objects selected for spectroscopy were sorted into bins according to their apparent $`R`$-band magnitude. The magnitude ranges, the typical number of mask setups for each MUNICS field ($`13\mathrm{}\times 13\mathrm{}`$), and the exposure times are given in Table 5. All objects with $`R21.5`$ (roughly corresponding to $`K^{}17.5`$) were observed at the Calar Alto 3.5-m telescope, the ESO 3.6-m telescope, and the HET, whereas spectroscopy of the fainter sample was carried out at the ESO VLT.

Data reduction was performed using iraf111iraf, the image reduction and analysis facility, is distributed by the National Optical Astronomy Observatories, which are operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation., except for cosmic ray filtering. Firstly, a standard CCD reduction was performed, including over-scan and bias correction, as well as interpolation of bad pixels. Cosmic rays were identified by searching for narrow local maxima in the image and fitting a bivariate rotated Gaussian to each maximum. A locally deviant pixel is then replaced by the mean value of the surrounding pixels if the Gaussian obeys appropriate flux ratio and sharpness criteria (Gössl & Riffeser, 2002).

The following reduction of the spectra was performed within the iraf specred package. The locations of the spectra on the two-dimensional image were defined, and the trace of the spectra produced by the distortion of the spectrograph was approximated by a polynomial of fourth order. Flat-fields were constructed from typically 21 images of an internal continuum lamp, and normalised by fitting a set of low-order splines to the illumination function of each slit. After dividing the frames by the appropriate flat-field, the apertures for extracting one-dimensional spectra from the two-dimensional images as well as the apertures for subtraction of the night sky were defined. This was done manually for each object to ensure maximum signal-to-noise ratio and accurate sky subtraction. If possible, sky apertures on both sides of each object were used, and the variation of the night sky perpendicular to the spectrum of each object was approximated by a polynomial of second order. Note that we used lower-order polynomials in cases where there were only few pixels to define the sky region in order to prevent artefacts due to ill-defined approximations. After that the one-dimensional spectra were extracted by summing the pixel values for each wavelength bin within the manually defined apertures and subtracting the appropriately scaled sky value from the fit perpendicular to the spectrum. Additionally we produced two-dimensional sky-subtracted images to be able to check whether a feature seen in the one-dimensional spectrum is a real spectral feature or a residual, for example from the replacement of cosmic ray events or the subtraction of sky-lines.

In the case of the MOSCA, EFOSC2 and LRS observations, spectra of internal lamps were used for wavelength calibration. The wavelength transformation was computed in form of a fourth order polynomial. Then the one-dimensional spectra were transformed to wavelength coordinates and re-binned using the appropriate resolution. Note that we usually took only one wavelength calibration image per mask, either between two mask exposures or after finishing all mask exposures. Nevertheless, this does not severely affect the wavelength calibration, since the maximum shift of the spectral pattern of a calibration lamp, caused by the flexure of the instrument, was measured to be 1 pixel for MOSCA between two extreme orientations of the spectrograph. According to the manuals, the flexure of the other instruments should have a similar order of magnitude. Also, the accuracy of the wavelength calibration can be efficiently examined by measuring the positions of night-sky emission lines. The comparison showed negligible deviations. The influence on the redshift determination will be discussed in Section 3.4. For the FORS data we used the lines of the night sky for the wavelength calibration, with the line data taken from Osterbrock et al. (1996, 1997).

Finally, the spectra were flux calibrated using spectro-photometric standard stars observed during each night. Extinction correction was based on average extinction curves either as published by the observatories (ESO for La Silla and Paranal Observatory, and McDonald Observatory) or by Hopp & Fernández (2002) for the Calar Alto observations. The accuracy of the flux calibration was tested by comparing the flux in individual broad-band photometry filters to the flux in the flux-calibrated spectrum. Fig. 1 shows an example for this method. Clearly, the flux calibration is satisfying, with deviations visible only at the ends of the spectral range of the instrument, where the corrections due to the response function of the grism become large.

Redshifts were determined using the rv package within iraf. Prominent absorption and emission features were identified in the spectra to obtain the corresponding redshift of a galaxy.222So far we have not applied cross-correlation techniques to determine redshifts, however we plan to do so in the future to reduce the fraction of galaxies without secure redshift due to low signal-to-noise ratios, although first tests show that we cannot significantly increase the number of securely measured redshifts by using correlation methods. We compared the one-dimensional spectrum with the two-dimensional sky-subtracted image to exclude features possibly affected by residuals from night-sky subtraction or cosmic filtering. Furthermore we ensured that the radial velocity displacement between different spectral features is not larger than the typical error expected from the measurement of the line centre and the wavelength calibration, i.e. typically $`\mathrm{\Delta }z5\times 10^4`$.

### 2.4 Catalogue construction

The final spectroscopic catalogue contains the celestial coordinates, the pixel coordinates form the photometric catalogue, the instrumental identification (mask and slit number), the measured redshift, the object classification based on the observed spectrum (galaxy, AGN, star, or unidentified object), a confidence class for the redshift determination, and a list of spectral features used for measuring the object’s redshift. The confidence class assigned to each object ranges from “1” to “6”, where “1” means highest confidence, and “6” means that no redshift could be determined. Descriptions of the confidence classes can be found in Table 6, although these can give only a crude impression of the meaning of the confidence classes. For all further analysis objects with confidence classes “5” and “6” are excluded. To check the assignment of confidence classes, we have made use of the 44 repeat observations of 41 objects described in detail in Section 3.4. The agreement between confidence classes attributed to the same object from different observations is in general very good. Deviations can be explained by different signal-to-noise ratios due to weather conditions or technical reasons. Not a single object with confidence class “1” to “4” has got a deviant redshift from a repeat observation. Typical examples for spectra and the appropriate confidence classes are shown in Fig. 2.

## 3 Properties of the spectroscopic sample

### 3.1 Object classes

The final catalogue contains 830 objects. 725 (or 87.3 per cent) are galaxies, 3 (0.4 per cent) are active galactic nuclei, 100 (12.0 per cent) are stars, and 2 objects (0.2 per cent) remain unidentified due to bad quality of the spectra or a lack of prominent spectral features in the wavelength range covered by the spectra. Redshifts could be determined for 500 objects (confidence classes 1 to 4), or 68.7 per cent of all extragalactic objects.

### 3.2 Confidence classes

The number of objects in the confidence classes described above are given in Table 7. The first three confidence classes contain 57.1 per cent of all objects selected for spectroscopy; these objects have high-quality spectra. Redshifts could be determined for 68.7 per cent of the objects.

### 3.3 Redshift distribution

The redshift distribution of the spectroscopic sample is shown in Fig. 3. The histogram has the shape expected for a magnitude limited spectroscopic sample, except for the slight excess of objects with redshifts $`z0.6`$ which, of course, are due to the sparse sample of faint objects observed at the VLT. The lack of objects with redshifts from VLT spectroscopy in the range $`0.5<z<0.6`$ is most likely due to the limits of the instruments’ spectral range. Objects with these redshifts have their 4000Å break around the lower end of the spectral range and the H$`\alpha `$ line around the upper end of the spectral range. Thus redshifts of objects with low signal-to-noise ratio may be difficult to determine due to the absence of those prominent spectral features in the observed spectra. This kind of bias can be corrected for by looking at the fraction of galaxies with securely determined redshift as a function of two colours, as will be shown below.

### 3.4 Accuracy of redshift determination

For objects with secure redshifts, where we consider all spectral features to be correctly identified, possible sources of error in the determination of redshift are firstly a possible displacement between the object and the slit centre, secondly the error of the wavelength calibration, and finally the error in the measurement of the line centres.

1. An offset of the object with respect to the slit centre causes an error of the redshift measurement. We estimate the RMS error to be 0.5″, corresponding to an inaccuracy of $`\sigma 6\times 10^4`$ in redshift space. This value is estimated from the accuracy of astrometry in the MUNICS catalogue (see MUNICS I), the typical errors of mask alignment and under the reasonable assumption that errors in the mechanical production of the masks (or in the slit-let positioning for FORS1 and the LRS) can be neglected.
2. The random errors of the wavelength calibration, the RMS of the residuals of the fit to the identified lines, are of the order 0.3 Å, or, in redshift, $`\sigma 4\times 10^5`$. Compared to the other sources of error, this inaccuracy can be neglected. For MOSCA, the maximum shift of the spectrum of the calibration lamp between zenith and airmass 2 was measured to be 1 pixel, corresponding to a systematic error of $`\sigma 4\times 10^4`$ in redshift.
3. Typical errors of the measurement of the line centres for the redshift determination are $`\sigma 5\times 10^4`$.

The overall limit to the accuracy estimated from these errors is $`\sigma 8\times 10^4`$ in redshift space.

We can also empirically determine the error of the redshift measurements from multiple observation of objects. A total of 41 galaxies – about 8 per cent of the sample – has been observed repeatedly, usually in order to fill gaps on the slit masks used for observation, thus enabling us to estimate typical errors of the redshift measurement by comparing the redshifts obtained from different observations. Note that 13 of these objects have been observed both with MOSCA and FORS, and 5 using MOSCA and the LRS. Thus it is possible to check for any systematics between redshift determinations with different spectrographs, and, in particular, for systematic offsets between different means of wavelength calibration, since we used the lines of the night sky for the FORS observations, whereas spectra from calibration lamps were used for the other spectrographs.

The histogram of the absolute values of pairwise differences for the 44 repeated redshift measurements for the 41 objects is shown in Fig. 4. Also shown is a Gaussian approximation to the histogram having a width characterised by $`\sigma ^{}=12\times 10^4`$, corresponding to a an RMS error of single measurements of $`\sigma =\sigma ^{}/\sqrt{2}=8\times 10^4`$, exactly the same value we have derived from the formal error analysis. Furthermore, we do not find any systematical differences between redshift determinations achieved with data from different instruments or observing runs.

### 3.5 Colours, magnitudes, and redshifts

To give a feeling for the distribution of objects in magnitudes, colours, and redshifts, we present diagrams for various combinations of these properties in Fig. 5.

In the upper panels of the figure, we show distributions of the apparent $`K`$-band magnitudes and the $`RK`$ colours versus redshift. The comparison of model spectral energy distributions from a combination of empirical spectra and stellar population synthesis models by Maraston (1998) for various Hubble types to the $`RK`$ colours of the objects in the MUNICS spectroscopic catalogue (upper right panel of Fig. 5) shows good agreement, although we seem to miss blue objects at higher redshifts, a fact which must be accounted for in any analysis of this dataset.

The two lower panels of Fig. 5 shows the distribution of extended objects in the photometric catalogue together with the colour distribution of galaxies with spectroscopic redshifts. Comparison shows that the spectroscopic catalogue is a fair representation of the distribution of objects in the photometric sample. Clearly, there is some incompleteness for faint red objects, but this can be corrected for, as will be shown in the following Section.

### 3.6 Redshift sampling rate and sky coverage

Observations for the spectroscopy of objects from the photometric MUNICS catalogue are almost complete, and most of the fields have been observed with reasonable completeness. The fraction of galaxies with redshift among all galaxies in the photometric catalogue is usually called the redshift sampling rate (e.g. Lin et al. 1999). As an example, Fig. 6 shows the redshift sampling rate of objects in all survey fields with spectroscopic data. The redshift sampling rate is the fraction of objects with successful redshift determination among all galaxies in the photometric catalogue, and, of course, is different from the redshift success rate, which is the fraction of all galaxies with redshift among all galaxies in the spectroscopic catalogue. The redshift success rate depending on apparent magnitude and colours is shown in Fig. 7 and discussed in Section 3.7. These colour distribution should be compared to the distributions of objects from the photometric and spectroscopic catalogue shown in Fig. 5.

Although a few of the masks for the fields still have to be observed, this does not necessarily inhibit the use of the sample for analysis of, e.g., the luminosity function, as long as the sample of objects with successful redshift determination is a fair representation of the total sample, and as long as any systematic incompleteness effects can be corrected for. We will show that this is the case for our catalogue because of the procedure we followed during mask preparation and observation. Firstly, we have tried to select all objects with $`K^{}17.5`$ in five survey fields for spectroscopy at Calar Alto. Since the field of view of the spectrograph (MOSCA) is almost as large as the size of our survey field, and since we usually have several masks per magnitude bin (at least for the fainter objects), we are not limited by geometrical constraints from the arrangement of slits on each mask. For the brighter magnitude bins we sometimes had to drop a few objects during the preparation of a mask, but we have tried to include these objects in fainter mask setups. Hence we expect that the small fraction of objects on to which no slit could be put is statistically similar to the distribution of objects to the appropriate magnitude limit. Secondly, all masks which could be observed so far were selected randomly from the masks prepared for observations, so that we do not expect any selection bias here either. Fig. 8 shows the distribution of objects with successful spectroscopy as compared to objects in the photometric catalogue for the survey patches called S2F1, S5F1, S6F5, and S7F5. These particular fields have highest completeness. The field S2F1 contains the sparse sample of fainter objects observed with the VLT. The figure nicely illustrates the statistically homogeneous distribution of the objects in the spectroscopic catalogue. The excess of objects with successful redshift determination visible in the lower half of the field S2F1 is due to foreground structure which can readily be seen in the image itself, showing again the influence of cosmic variance and the importance of having several fields with a relatively large solid angle for the analysis of statistical quantities, one of the huge advantages of the MUNICS project compared to smaller surveys.

### 3.7 Redshift success rate

The efficiency of redshift determination of spectroscopic observations is described by the redshift success rate rather than the redshift sampling rate. The former is the fraction of objects with secure redshift among all galaxies which were observed spectroscopically and is shown in Fig. 7. As expected, the redshift success rate drops off for very faint and very red objects, but is in general very high due to the good quality of the spectra.

### 3.8 Extremely red objects

During the last years there has been a lot of research on ‘extremely red objects (EROs)’, usually defined in terms of their very red optical–near-infrared colour ($`RK>(5\mathrm{}6)`$ mag; see, for instance, Martini (2001) and references therein). While the MUNICS catalogue obviously contains such objects, they are not aimed at with the spectroscopic observations described in this paper, mainly because it is very difficult to obtain optical spectra of faint EROs. This is evident from Figures 6 and 7 showing the redshift sampling rate and the redshift success rate for the MUNICS spectroscopic observations. Nevertheless, there are 15 such objects in the spectroscopic catalogue, all having colours of $`5.0\mathrm{mag}RK5.5\mathrm{mag}`$. Among these we find 7 objects for which no redshift could be determined, 5 galaxies with redshifts $`0.46z1.01`$, all having a spectral energy distribution characteristic of early-type galaxies, as well as 3 stars of spectral type M. First results of near-infrared spectroscopy of EROs selected from the MUNICS catalogue are described in Saracco et al. (2003).

## 4 The near-infrared luminosity function of galaxies

### 4.1 Calculation of the luminosity function

The luminosity function is computed using the non-parametric $`V_{\mathrm{max}}`$ formalism (Schmidt, 1968). This method has been shown to yield an unbiased estimate of the luminosity function if the sample is not affected by strong clustering (Takeuchi et al., 2000). Because of our field selection and the relatively large area of the survey, divided into several individual fields, we believe that this assumption is valid for our sample.

The $`V_{\mathrm{max}}`$ formalism accounts for the fact that some fainter galaxies are not visible in the whole survey volume. Each galaxy $`i`$ in a given redshift bin $`[z_{\mathrm{lower}},z_{\mathrm{upper}}]`$ contributes to the number density an amount inversely proportional to the volume $`V_i`$ in which the galaxy is detectable in the survey:

$$V_i=\underset{z_{\mathrm{lower}}}{\overset{\mathrm{min}(z_{\mathrm{upper}},z_{\mathrm{max}})}{}}\frac{dV}{dz}𝑑z,$$
(1)
where $`dV=d\mathrm{\Omega }r^2dr`$ is the comoving volume element, $`d\mathrm{\Omega }`$ is the solid angle covered by the survey, and $`z_{\mathrm{max}}`$ is the maximum redshift at which galaxy $`i`$ having absolute magnitude $`M_i`$ is still detectable given the limiting apparent magnitude of the survey. We have made sure that the effect of the volume correction is of importance only in the faintest bin in absolute magnitude, and that even in this case the correction is small.

Additionally, the contribution of each galaxy $`i`$ is weighted by the inverse of the detection probability $`P(m_{K,i})`$ of the $`K^{}`$-band selected photometric catalogue, where we assume that the detection probability is independent of the galaxy type and can be approximated by that of point-like sources. Completeness simulations for realistic galaxy profiles at various redshifts have shown that this approximation is indeed sufficient for galaxies at redshifts $`z<1`$ (Snigula et al. 2002, hereafter MUNICS IV). However, since the objects under consideration here are comparatively bright, the influence of this correction is negligible anyway.

In addition to the correction for the incompleteness of the photometric MUNICS catalogue described above, we have to correct for the incompleteness of the spectroscopic catalogue with respect to the photometric sample, described by the redshift sampling rate (see Section 3.6). In principle, this correction depends on the apparent magnitude of the objects (faint objects may produce a lower signal-to-noise ratio or might not have been considered for spectroscopy)333Note that we can neglect any influence of the size of the objects (large objects might have larger losses of light at the slit of the spectrograph), since – especially at faint magnitudes – objects appear to be almost point-like., on their intrinsic type (it is easier to determine a redshift for objects showing prominent emission lines, for example) and on the redshift of the source (influencing the position of prominent spectral features with respect to the spectral range or bright night-sky emission lines, for example). However, it is difficult to determine a completeness ratio depending on spectral type and redshift, because this information is lacking for all objects without secure redshift measurement.

Hence the redshift sampling rate is often quantified in terms of its dependence on apparent magnitude and two colours instead of spectral type and redshift (see Lin et al. (1999), for example). In this work we compute the redshift sampling rate $`C_i`$,

$$C_i=\frac{N_{z,i}}{N_i},$$
(2)
depending on apparent $`K^{}`$-band magnitude $`m_K`$, and the colours $`RK`$ and $`JK`$. Specifically, for each galaxy $`i`$ with a redshift, we determine the number $`N_i`$ of galaxies in the photometric sample and the number $`N_{z,i}`$ of galaxies with successful redshift determination in joint bins of apparent magnitude and colours, where we count all galaxies $`j`$ obeying

$`\left|m_{K,i}m_{K,j}\right|`$ $``$ $`0.70\mathrm{mag},`$
$`\left|(RK)_i(RK)_j\right|`$ $``$ $`0.70\mathrm{mag},`$ (3)
$`\left|(JK)_i(JK)_j\right|`$ $``$ $`0.35\mathrm{mag}.`$
On the one hand, the size of the intervals should be large enough to contain a reasonable number of objects to avoid large fluctuations due to small-number statistics. On the other hand, the intervals should not be too large in order to be able to follow the change of the sampling rate. The numbers given in equation (3) have been chosen after careful tests. Note that we have used larger intervals for $`m_K`$ and $`RK`$ since these distributions are broader than the one for $`JK`$. To illustrate the general behaviour of the redshift sampling rate, we show projections of the function in Fig. 6. Note that we have to apply a correction factor of 0.93 to the sampling rate because of stellar contamination of the class of extended objects, a bias introduced by our image-based object classification algorithm, described in detail in Section 2.2.

The near-infrared luminosity function $`\mathrm{\Phi }(M)`$ is then computed according to the formula

$$\mathrm{\Phi }(M)dM=\underset{i}{}\frac{1}{V_i}\frac{1}{P(m_{K,i})}\frac{1}{C_i}dM,$$
(4)
where the sum runs over all objects $`i`$ in the redshift range for which we want to calculate the luminosity function.

### 4.2 Converting to absolute magnitudes

For the conversion of apparent magnitudes $`m`$ into absolute magnitudes $`M`$ we need $`k(z)`$ corrections for the galaxies, defined by

$$M=m5\mathrm{log}\left(\frac{d_L(z)}{10\mathrm{pc}}\right)2.5\mathrm{log}\left(1+z\right)k(z),$$
(5)
where $`d_L(z)`$ is the cosmological luminosity distance of the galaxy, and $`z`$ is the redshift.

The $`k(z)`$ corrections for the objects in the spectroscopic catalogue are obtained by fitting the model spectral energy distributions shown in the left panel of Fig. 9 to the broad-band photometry of the objects. The template spectral energy distributions are constructed by combining empirical spectra and stellar population synthesis models by Maraston (1998). The detailed description of these models will be found in MUNICS II. The $`k(z)`$ corrections for the $`K`$ band and the $`J`$ band are presented in the middle and right panel of Fig. 9, respectively, while Fig. 1 shows a comparison of flux-calibrated spectrum, broad-band photometry, and fitted model spectral energy distribution for two objects in the spectroscopic catalogue.

We have also tested the influence of using only one intermediate-type model spectral energy distributions for deriving the $`k(z)`$ corrections. As is obvious from Fig. 9, this should work well for the $`K`$ band, where the spread between $`k(z)`$ corrections for different models is small, but a bit less so well for the $`J`$ band with its larger variations. Indeed, we do see hardly any difference for the $`K`$-band luminosity function, and only a small difference in the $`J`$ band. However, it is important to note that in the following we do not use $`k(z)`$ corrections from one model, but those from the fitting of template spectral energy distributions to the six-filter broad-band photometry of the MUNICS catalogue.

### 4.3 The $`K`$-band luminosity function

The rest-frame $`K`$-band luminosity function of galaxies drawn from the spectroscopic sample was constructed in the redshift intervals $`0.1z0.3`$ (median redshift $`z=0.2`$), $`0.3z0.6`$ (median redshift $`z=0.4`$, and $`0.6z0.9`$ (median redshift $`z=0.7`$). The two lower redshift bins comprise the majority of objects in the sample, as can be seen in Fig. 3.

The centres of the bins in absolute magnitude were chosen in a way which ensures a fair representation of the bright end of the luminosity function, i.e. the bin centres at the bright end correspond roughly to the absolute magnitudes of the brightest objects in that bin.

Fig. 10 shows the results for the $`K`$-band luminosity function of galaxies from spectroscopic observations in different redshift bins compared to the luminosity functions determined from the local samples of Loveday (2000) and Kochanek et al. (2001). Clearly there is a good general agreement between the luminosity function measured at $`z=0.2`$ and the ones from local galaxy samples, although our data seem to suggest a somewhat smaller value for $`M_K^{}`$. Fitting a Schechter function (Schechter 1976; see also equations (6) and (7) for the parametrisation of the function) to the luminosity function yields the parameters $`M_K^{}5\mathrm{log}h=(23.79\pm 0.24)`$ mag and $`\mathrm{\Phi }_K^{}=(1.11\pm 0.12)\times 10^2h^3\mathrm{Mpc}^3`$. We used a fixed value of $`\alpha _K=1.10`$, close to the values derived for local galaxies by Loveday (2000) and Kochanek et al. (2001). Contrary to the $`J`$-band luminosity function discussed below, our normalisation also nicely agrees with the Cole et al. (2001) measurement, although they derive a considerably shallower faint-end slope of $`\alpha =0.93\pm 0.04`$. The errors were derived by running Monte-Carlo simulations with 100 000 iterations, taking into account the errors due to the binning in absolute magnitudes. Excluding the faintest magnitude bin does not change the result of the fit significantly.

Note that the agreement between our measurement and the local Schechter functions is also very good at the faint end, although with poor statistics and large correction factors due to the incompleteness. From this we draw the conclusion that our method to correct for incompleteness yields reliable estimates.

At redshifts $`0.3z0.6`$, we find a mild evolution of the luminosity function, with a higher characteristic luminosity and a lower normalisation, yielding Schechter parameters of $`M_K^{}5\mathrm{log}h=(24.04\pm 0.26)`$ mag and $`\mathrm{\Phi }_K^{}=(0.71\pm 0.25)\times 10^2h^3\mathrm{Mpc}^3`$. The error contours for the Schechter parameters for the luminosity function in the two lower redshift bins are shown in the same figure. These contours were computed from the $`\chi ^2`$ distribution. Finally, we show a comparison of the measurements of the $`K`$-band luminosity function in all three redshift bins. Although the statistics becomes rather poor in the highest redshift bin with median redshift $`z=0.7`$, it confirms the trend for the evolution of the luminosity function. However, it is evident that the total evolution out to redshifts around 0.7 is not dramatically large.

Comparison of our result with the measurements by Cowie et al. (1996) who derived the $`K`$-band luminosity function at various redshifts $`0<z<1`$ from a spectroscopic sample in two small fields shows good agreement with our results. Their values for the Schechter parameters $`M_K^{}`$, $`\mathrm{\Phi }_K^{}`$, and $`\alpha _K`$ are similar to measurements for local samples. Again, our data favour a slightly larger characteristic luminosity, but the trend of a falling normalisation with redshift is found both in the MUNICS and in the Cowie et al. measurements of the luminosity function.

### 4.4 The $`J`$-band luminosity function

The results for the rest-frame $`J`$-band luminosity function of galaxies from our spectroscopic catalogue are shown in Fig. 11. Note that this is the first determination of the $`J`$-band luminosity function at higher redshifts following the local measurements by Balogh et al. (2001) and Cole et al. (2001).

The Schechter parameters (see equations (6) and (7) for the definition of the Schechter function) derived in the lowest redshift bin ($`0.1z0.3`$, median redshift $`z=0.2`$) are $`M_J^{}5\mathrm{log}h=(22.45\pm 0.24)`$ mag, $`\mathrm{\Phi }_J^{}=(1.49\pm 0.22)\times 10^2h^3\mathrm{Mpc}^3`$ with the faint-end slope $`\alpha _J`$ set to $`\alpha _J=1.00`$. The errors were derived by running Monte-Carlo simulations with 100 000 iterations, taking into account the errors due to the binning in absolute magnitudes. Compared to the Cole et al. (2001) sample, our measurement seems to favour a similar characteristic magnitude $`M_J^{}`$, but a somewhat larger value of the normalisation $`\mathrm{\Phi }_K^{}`$. Unfortunately, Balogh et al. (2001), the only other work on the $`J`$-band luminosity function available so far, do not derive the normalisation, thus the reason for the discrepancy remains unclear. In the $`K`$-band, the value of the normalisation derived by Cole et al. (2001) is in good agreement with other measurements, although maybe a bit on the low side.

For the intermediate redshift bin $`0.3z0.6`$ (median redshift $`z=0.4`$), the Schechter parameters derived from our data are $`M_J^{}5\mathrm{log}h=(23.06\pm 0.24)`$ mag, $`\mathrm{\Phi }_J^{}=(0.76\pm 0.25)h^3\mathrm{Mpc}^3`$, where $`\alpha _J`$ was again set to a value of $`1.00`$. Thus, similar to the $`K`$-band, we see a mild evolution of the luminosity function with a higher characteristic luminosity and a smaller normalisation. The error contours for the Schechter parameters of the luminosity function in the two lower redshift bins are shown in the same Figure. These contours were derived from the $`\chi ^2`$ distribution. At the highest redshifts probed by our sample, the evolution of the $`J`$-band luminosity function seems to be confirmed, although the statistics becomes rather poor in this case.

## 5 Discussion

To quantify the redshift evolution of the near-infrared luminosity functions, we performed both Kolmogorov-Smirnov tests for the cumulative distributions of absolute magnitudes and a $`\chi ^2`$ analysis for the redshift evolution of the Schechter parameters.

### 5.1 Kolmogorov-Smirnov tests

One method to compare the measurements of the near-infrared luminosity functions at various redshifts is to apply the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test to the cumulative distribution of objects in absolute magnitudes. Of course, completeness and $`1/V_{\mathrm{max}}`$ corrections have to be applied to each individual object entering the distribution. The advantage of this method is that it uses the absolute magnitudes as measured in the sample without binning. Furthermore, it is independent of the relative normalisation of the samples one wants to compare.

We firstly have run this test by comparing the cumulative luminosity distributions from our data in the three redshift bins to the local measurements of the luminosity function. The results are shown in Table 10 for the $`K`$-band, and Table 11 for the $`J`$-band, respectively. Furthermore, we show the resulting cumulative distributions in Figures 12 and 13 for the $`K`$ band and the $`J`$ band, respectively.

While the cumulative distributions are in fair agreement for the lower redshift bin ($`0.1<z<0.3`$), they are significantly different for the two higher redshift bins ($`0.3<z<0.6`$ and $`0.6<z<0.9`$, respectively), confirming the result found from the fitting of Schechter parameters $`M^{}`$ and $`\mathrm{\Phi }^{}`$.

As an additional test we have applied the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test to the cumulative distributions from the two lower redshift bins. The results of this test are shown in Fig. 14, where one can see that the probabilities that both distributions are drawn from the same parent population are very small.

### 5.2 Likelihood analysis of luminosity function evolution

In this Section we will describe a $`\chi ^2`$ analysis of the redshift evolution of the near-infrared luminosity functions. This test uses the Schechter parametrisation

$$\mathrm{\Psi }(L)=\frac{\mathrm{\Phi }^{}}{L^{}}\left(\frac{L}{L^{}}\right)^\alpha \mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{L}{L^{}}\right)$$
(6)
of the luminosity function, where $`L^{}`$ is the characteristic luminosity, $`\alpha `$ the faint-end slope, and $`\mathrm{\Phi }^{}`$ the normalisation of the luminosity function (Schechter, 1976). The corresponding equation in absolute magnitudes reads

$`\mathrm{\Psi }(M)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{2}{5}}\mathrm{\Phi }^{}\mathrm{ln}\mathrm{10\hspace{0.25em}10}^{0.4(M^{}M)(1+\alpha )}`$ (7)
$`\mathrm{exp}\left(10^{0.4(M^{}M)}\right).`$
To estimate the rate of evolution of the parameters with redshift, we define evolution parameters $`\mu `$ and $`\nu `$ as follows:

$`\mathrm{\Phi }^{}(z)`$ $`=`$ $`\mathrm{\Phi }^{}(0)\left(1+\mu z\right),`$
$`M^{}(z)`$ $`=`$ $`M^{}(0)+\nu z,\mathrm{and}`$ (8)
$`\alpha (z)`$ $`=`$ $`\alpha (0)\alpha .`$
Note that the faint end of the luminosity function cannot be determined very well from our data, thus we leave the faint-end slope $`\alpha `$ of the Schechter luminosity function fixed, as we have also done during the fitting of a Schechter function to our data.

To quantify the redshift evolution of $`\mathrm{\Phi }^{}`$ and $`M^{}`$ we now compare our luminosity function data in all redshift bins with the local Schechter function evolved according to equation (8) to the appropriate redshift. We do this for a grid of values for $`\mu `$ and $`\nu `$, and calculate the value of $`\chi ^2`$ for each grid point according to

$$\chi ^2(\mu ,\nu )=\frac{1}{n}\underset{i=1}{\overset{N}{}}\frac{\left[\mathrm{\Phi }(M_i,z_i)\mathrm{\Psi }(M_i,\mu ,\nu ,z_i)\right]^2}{\sigma _i^2},$$
(9)
where $`\mathrm{\Phi }(M,z)`$ is the measurement of the luminosity function at median redshift $`z`$ in the magnitude bin centred on $`M`$, $`\mathrm{\Psi }(M,\mu ,\nu ,z)`$ is the local Schechter function evolved according to the evolution model defined in equation (8) to the redshift $`z`$, $`\sigma _i`$ is the RMS error of the luminosity function value, and $`n`$ is the number of free parameters of the approximation, i.e. the number of data points used minus the number of parameters derived from the fitting.

We want to compare our measurement of the $`K`$-band luminosity function with the Schechter approximations to the local determinations. We use the measurements by Loveday (2000) and Kochanek et al. (2001) for the $`K`$-band (since the luminosity function parameters derived from local samples are very similar anyway), and the local $`J`$-band luminosity function is the one by Cole et al. (2001). The Schechter parameters derived by those authors are shown in Tables 12 and 13. Chosing a shallower faint-end slope in the $`K`$ band, similar to the one derived by Cole et al. (2001), changes the result slightly, but – within the errors – not significantly.

To avoid that data points with large completeness correction factors affect the result, we exclude all luminosity function measurements with a total correction factor (photometric incompleteness, spectroscopic incompleteness, and $`V/V_{\mathrm{max}}`$ correction) larger than three.

The result of the likelihood analysis is shown in Fig. 15. For the $`K`$-band, we compare our measurements at redshifts $`0.2`$, $`0.4`$, and $`0.7`$ to the local measurements by Loveday (2000) and Kochanek et al. (2001), and to the average of their Schechter parameters. We detect a brightening of $`\mathrm{\Delta }M_K^{}/\mathrm{\Delta }z0.70`$ magnitudes, and a decline of the number density of objects to redshift one. The decrease of $`\mathrm{\Phi }_K^{}`$ with redshift is obviously quite strongly dependent on the parameters of the local luminosity function, however, for the average value we derive $`\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Phi }_K^{}/(\mathrm{\Phi }_K^{}\mathrm{\Delta }z)0.35`$. These results also give quantitative estimates of the evolution which can already be seen in the Schechter parameters derived from our data, see Table 8 for details. Note that Huang et al. (2002) derive a significantly brighter $`M^{}`$, a slightly larger normalisation, and a steeper faint-end slope, which they ascribe to redshift selection effects. If their measurements are valid, the brightening to redshift one would be smaller, whereas the evolution in number density would be even larger.

Within the errors, the results found in this work agree nicely with the measurements of the $`K`$-band luminosity function derived from the full MUNICS sample based on photometric redshifts. First results are shown in MUNICS III and show the same trend for the evolution of the luminosity function with redshift. A more detailed analysis will be shown in MUNICS II, where the evolutionary trend with a brightening of 0.5 to 0.7 mag and a decrease in number density of roughly 25 per cent to redshift one is confirmed.

In the case of the $`J`$-band (right panel of Fig. 15), the evolution of the luminosity function is obviously not constrained. This is also apparent from the error contours of the Schechter parameters shown in Fig. 11 (lower left panel), where one can see that the local measurement by Cole et al. (2001) has a characteristic magnitude similar to the one derived in our lowest redshift bin, but a normalisation in between the ones derived from our two lower redshift intervals, thus making any conclusions about evolution with respect to the local sample difficult. Nevertheless, we note that our $`J`$-band luminosity function data seem to confirm the trend seen for the $`K`$ band, which is also evident from the Kolmogorov-Smirnov tests presented in Section 5.1.

## 6 Conclusions

We have presented spectroscopic follow-up observations of galaxies from the Munich Near-Infrared Cluster Survey (MUNICS), described the observations, the data-reduction and the properties of the spectroscopic sample. Furthermore we have presented the rest-frame $`K`$-band luminosity function for galaxies at median redshifts of $`z=0.2`$, $`z=0.4`$, and $`z=0.7`$. The Schechter parameters derived at redshift $`z=0.2`$ are $`M_K^{}5\mathrm{log}h=(23.79\pm 0.24)`$ mag, $`\mathrm{\Phi }_K^{}=(1.11\pm 0.12)\times 10^2h^3\mathrm{Mpc}^3`$ for fixed $`\alpha _K=1.10`$ as measured locally, in good agreement to values derived at low redshifts. At redshift $`z=0.4`$, however, the Schechter parameters are $`M_K^{}5\mathrm{log}h=(24.04\pm 0.26)`$ mag and $`\mathrm{\Phi }_K^{}=(0.71\pm 0.25)\times 10^2h^3\mathrm{Mpc}^3`$ (for the same value of $`\alpha _K`$). Thus the value for the characteristic luminosity is somewhat larger and the normalisation smaller than the ones derived locally. This is confirmed by Kolmogorov-Smirnov tests for the cumulative distributions in absolute magnitudes, and by a $`\chi ^2`$ analysis for the evolution of the luminosity function. From the latter we find mild evolution in magnitudes ($`\mathrm{\Delta }M_K^{}=0.70\pm 0.30`$ mag) and number densities ($`\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Phi }_K^{}/\mathrm{\Phi }_K^{}=0.35\pm 0.30`$) to redshift one. Furthermore, we have presented the first measurement of the $`J`$-band luminosity function of galaxies at higher redshifts with Schechter parameters $`M_J^{}5\mathrm{log}h=(22.45\pm 0.24)`$ mag, $`\mathrm{\Phi }_J^{}=(1.49\pm 0.22)\times 10^2h^3\mathrm{Mpc}^3`$ for $`z=0.2`$, and $`M_J^{}5\mathrm{log}h=(23.06\pm 0.24)`$ mag, $`\mathrm{\Phi }_J^{}=(0.76\pm 0.25)h^3\mathrm{Mpc}^3`$ for $`z=0.4`$, showing the same trend of evolution as the $`K`$-band luminosity function. The faint-end slope $`\alpha _J`$ set to a value of $`1.00`$ in both redshift bins. The evolutionary trend of the near-infrared luminosity of $`K`$-selected galaxies described above is consistent with expectations from pure luminosity evolution, while the decrease in number density with redshift can be understood in the context of hierarchical galaxy formation models.

## Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the staff at Calar Alto Observatory for their extensive support during the many observing runs of this project and especially for carrying out the service observations in 2002, as well as the staff at Paranal Observatory and McDonald Observatory for assistance during observing runs for this project. Furthermore we appreciate the efforts of Dr. Josef Fried (MPIA Heidelberg) who organised the production of a very large number of MOSCA slit masks. We are grateful to Dr. Lutz Wisotzki (Potsdam) for allowing us to use spectroscopic data obtained in the course of a joint project, and to Dr. Donald Hamilton for taking the observations at the ESO 3.6-m telescope. GF wants to thank Claus Gössl for kind assistance during a somewhat difficult observing run and for help with his image reduction software, as well as Arno Riffeser, Armin Gabasch, and Yuliana Goranova for helpful discussions. ND acknowledges support by the Alexander von Humboldt Gesellschaft. We thank the anonymous referee for his suggestions which helped to improve the presentation of the paper. The Marcario Low Resolution Spectrograph is a joint project of the Hobby-Eberly Telescope partnership and the Instituto de Astronomía de la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, and was partly funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, grant number Be 1091/9–1. The Hobby-Eberly Telescope is operated by McDonald Observatory on behalf of The University of Texas at Austin, the Pennsylvania State University, Stanford University, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, and Georg-August-Universität Göttingen. This research has made use of NASA’s Astrophysics Data System (ADS) Abstract Service and the NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database (NED). The MUNICS project was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, Sonderforschungsbereich 375, Astroteilchenphysik.


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## References


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# 3.1 𝜇m H2O Ice Absorption in LINER-Type Ultraluminous Infrared Galaxies with Cool Far-Infrared Colors: the Centrally-Concentrated Nature of Their Deeply Buried Energy Sources

## 1 Introduction

Galaxies that radiate most of their extremely large, quasar-like luminosities ($`{}_{}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{>}`$ 10$`{}_{}{}^{12}L_{}^{}`$) as infrared dust emission – the ultraluminous infrared galaxies (ULIRGs; Sanders & Mirabel 1996) – dominate the bright end of the galaxy luminosity function in the nearby universe (Soifer et al., 1987). They have been used, extensively, to derive information on the dust-obscured star-formation rate, dust content, and metallicity in the early universe (Barger, Cowie, & Richards, 2000; Blain et al., 1999). Understanding the nature of nearby ULIRGs, and more particularly, determining whether they are powered by starbursts or active galactic nuclei (AGNs), or both, is of great importance in modern extragalactic astronomy.

Spectroscopic observation of the thermal infrared wavelength range (3–20 $`\mu `$m) is currently one of the most powerful methods of determining the energy sources of ULIRGs. At this wavelength range, dust extinction is lower than at shorter wavelengths ($`<`$2 $`\mu `$m), so it becomes possible to detect and measure the emission from more highly obscured energy sources, with smaller uncertainty in dust extinction corrections. In addition, spectral features in this waveband can be used to distinguish between starburst and AGN activity. Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) emission is detected in starbursts but not in AGNs, making it a good indicator of starburst activity (Moorwood, 1986; Roche et al., 1991), while the presence of AGNs hidden behind dust can be recognized through absorption features. PAH emission and absorption features, detected in ground-based slit spectra (e.g., Dudley 1999; Imanishi & Dudley 2000; Soifer et al. 2002) and in ISO spectra taken with large apertures (e.g., Tran et al. 2001), have been utilized to investigate the energy sources of ULIRGs.

In ULIRGs, there are two potentially energetically significant components. One is a weakly obscured (AV $`{}_{}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{<}`$ 20 mag) 111 Throughout this paper, “weakly obscured” is used to mean that the flux attenuation at 3–4 $`\mu `$m is insignificant, which is roughly the criterion that A3-4μm $`{}_{}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{<}`$ 1 mag, or AV $`{}_{}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{<}`$ 20 mag if the Galactic extinction curve of $`A_{34\mu \mathrm{m}}/A_\mathrm{V}0.06`$ (Rieke & Lebofsky, 1985; Lutz et al., 1996) is adopted. starburst in the extended (kpc scale) host galaxy and also at the nucleus. The other is a nuclear, compact (less than a few hundred pc in size), highly obscured energy source, powered by an AGN and/or a compact starburst. Recent ground-based high spatial resolution imaging observations (Surace & Sanders, 1999; Surace, Sanders, & Evans, 2000) have shown that the weakly obscured ($`A_\mathrm{V}<20`$ mag) starbursts are energetically insignificant, and that the nuclear, compact, highly obscured energy sources dominate in ULIRGs (Sakamoto et al., 1999; Soifer et al., 2000). However, the nature of these nuclear sources is not easy to determine, because dust extinction can be significant even in the thermal infrared wavelength range. The observed PAH-to-infrared luminosity ratios in ULIRGs have been found to be smaller than in known starburst galaxies by a large factor (Fischer, 2000). Assuming that the luminosities of the PAH emission are a good indicator of the absolute magnitudes of starbursts, the smaller ratios in ULIRGs could be due either to an increase in the dust extinction of the PAH emission, or a dominant contribution from AGNs to the infrared luminosities of ULIRGs. Determining which explanation is correct requires reliable estimates of the dust extinction toward the starbursts in ULIRGs. However, these estimates become complicated if the assumption of a “foreground screen” dust geometry is not valid for the starbursts (McLeod et al., 1993).

To understand the nature of the compact, highly obscured energy sources in ULIRGs, the spectral shapes of the nuclear compact emission can provide more insight than just the absolute luminosities of PAH emission, because the equivalent widths of PAH emission are, by definition, robust to the amount of dust extinction. If the nuclear compact emission of ULIRGs displayed significantly lower equivalent widths of PAH emission than typically seen in starburst galaxies, and, in addition, strong absorption features were detected, it would suggest that energetically important dust-obscured AGNs were present. Since the attenuation of the extended, weakly obscured emission is much smaller than that of the emission from the compact, highly obscured energy sources, the observed 3–20 $`\mu `$m spectra taken with large apertures can be strongly contaminated by the extended emission, even though the total infrared (8–1000 $`\mu `$m) luminosities of ULIRGs are dominated by the compact energy sources. In this case, the signatures of absorption features toward the compact energy sources can be diluted. Hence spectroscopy with a narrow (less than a few arcsec) slit – comparable to the spatial extent of the compact component – is better suited to probe the nature of the compact energy sources in ULIRGs.

Ground-based slit spectroscopy in the $`L`$-band (2.8–4.1 $`\mu `$m) has several important advantages for investigating the nature of dust-enshrouded AGNs:

1. The dust extinction curve is fairly grey (wavelength-independent) at 3–10 $`\mu `$m (Lutz et al., 1996).
2. The dust around an AGN has a strong temperature gradient, in that the inner (outer) dust has a higher (lower) temperature. The temperature of the innermost dust is determined by the dust sublimation temperature (T $``$ 1000 K). In the case of blackbody radiation ($`\lambda _{\mathrm{peak}}`$ \[$`\mu `$m\] $`\times `$ T \[K\] $``$ 3000), the 3–4 $`\mu `$m continuum emission is dominated by dust with $`T=800`$–1000 K located in the innermost regions, while the $``$10 $`\mu `$m continuum emission is dominated by dust with $`T300`$ K located further out. Thus, the dust extinction toward the $``$10 $`\mu `$m continuum emission regions, as estimated using e.g., the optical depth of the 9.7 $`\mu `$m silicate dust absorption feature, is much smaller than the dust extinction toward the AGN; the dereddened AGN luminosity will be underestimated if the extinction correction is made based on $``$10 $`\mu `$m data alone. By contrast, the dust extinction toward the innermost, 3–4 $`\mu `$m continuum emission regions, as estimated using 3–4 $`\mu `$m data, is a better indicator of the dust extinction toward the AGN itself. In the case that an AGN is the only energy source, the 3–4 $`\mu `$m continuum emission predominantly originates in the innermost, 800–1000 K dust. The dust extinction toward the 3–4 $`\mu `$m continuum emission can therefore be reliably fitted with a foreground screen dust model. In a real galaxy, weakly obscured starburst emission may contribute to the observed nuclear 3–4 $`\mu `$m flux. However, as long as the AGN is sufficiently luminous that AGN-powered continuum emission contributes significantly to the observed 3–4 $`\mu `$m flux, evidence for an AGN can be found, provided that the starburst contribution is subtracted properly, even if the absorption optical depth toward the AGN is larger than unity at 3–4 $`\mu `$m ($`A_{34\mu m}>1`$ mag or $`A_\mathrm{V}>20`$ mag; Rieke & Lebofsky 1985). We have previously demonstrated this in two ULIRGs: IRAS 08572+3915 ($`A_\mathrm{V}>130`$ mag; Imanishi & Dudley 2000), and UGC 5101 ($`A_\mathrm{V}>115`$ mag; Imanishi et al. 2001).
3. At 2.8–4.1 $`\mu `$m, in addition to the 3.3 $`\mu `$m PAH emission, 3.4 $`\mu `$m carbonaceous dust absorption and 3.1 $`\mu `$m H2O ice absorption are present. As we will show later in this paper, all these features can be used in a complementary manner to constrain the properties of the compact energy sources. They are simultaneously observable with recently available spectrographs that cover the whole $`L`$-band atmospheric window (2.8–4.1 $`\mu `$m), if the target sources are at $`z<0.15`$. In this redshift range, a statistically significant number of ULIRGs have been found with IRAS.
4. In the near future, slit spectra of ULIRGs at 5.3–40 $`\mu `$m will be obtainable using the SIRTF IRS. By combining 3–4 $`\mu `$m and 5.3–40 $`\mu `$m slit spectra, the presence of a strong temperature gradient in the dust (a signature of an AGN) can be investigated through the comparison of the optical depths of absorption features at different wavelengths at 3–20 $`\mu `$m (Dudley & Wynn-Williams, 1997; Imanishi, 2000).

In the study of ULIRGs, it is particularly important to detect and quantify elusive AGNs that are deeply buried in dust along all sightlines (hereafter buried AGNs; Imanishi et al. 2001). ULIRGs that are classified optically as LINERs and have cool far-infrared colors (Sanders et al. 1988) have generally been taken to be starburst-powered (Downes & Solomon, 1998; Taniguchi et al., 1999; Lutz et al., 1999). However, Imanishi et al. (2001) argued that LINER ULIRGs may contain buried AGNs (see also Antonucci 2001). In this paper 2.8–4.1 $`\mu `$m ground-based slit spectra of LINER ULIRGs with cool far-infrared colors are reported, to search for observational evidence for energetically important, buried AGNs. Throughout this paper, H0 $`=`$ 75 km s-1 Mpc-1, $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{M}`$ = 0.3, and $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ = 0.7 are adopted.

## 2 Targets, Observations and Data Analysis

The seven LINER ULIRGs in Table 1 were observed. Table 1 summarizes their infrared emission properties. All have cool far-infrared colors. The optical classifications as LINERs are based on Veilleux et al. (1995) and Veilleux, Kim, & Sanders (1999). Table 2 summarizes the observing log.

The 3.1–4.0 $`\mu `$m slit spectrum of UGC 5101 has already been presented in Imanishi et al. (2001). Descriptions of the observations and data analysis were offered in that Letter. To summarize, the observations were made at the IRTF on Mauna Kea, Hawaii, using the grism mode of NSFCAM (Shure et al., 1994). Although the wavelength coverage of the NSFCAM grism mode is 2.8–4.1 $`\mu `$m, results at $`\lambda <`$ 3.1 $`\mu `$m were not presented in Imanishi et al. (2001) because our main aim in that study was to investigate the 3.3 $`\mu `$m PAH emission and 3.4 $`\mu `$m carbonaceous dust absorption features, and because the Earth’s atmospheric transmission at 2.8–3.1 $`\mu `$m is poorer than at $`\lambda >`$ 3.3 $`\mu `$m. However, after the publication of Imanishi et al. (2001), Spoon et al. (2002) reported the detection of 6.0 $`\mu `$m H2O ice absorption in UGC 5101, and suggested that the 3.1 $`\mu `$m H2O ice absorption feature might be present in our 3.1–4.0 $`\mu `$m spectrum. Therefore we carefully analyzed the spectrum at 2.8–3.1 $`\mu `$m to investigate the 3.1 $`\mu `$m H2O ice absorption feature, whose profile is very broad, extending over at least $`\lambda _{rest}=`$ 2.8–3.3 $`\mu `$m in the rest-frame (Smith, Sellgren, & Tokunaga 1989).

The 2.8–4.1 $`\mu `$m spectra of the other ULIRGs were obtained with the Infrared Spectrograph and Camera (IRCS; Kobayashi et al. 2000) at the Subaru telescope on Mauna Kea, Hawaii. The sky was clear during the observations of these objects and the seeing at K was measured to be 0$`\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}`$5–0$`\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}`$8 in full-width at half maximum. A 0$`\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}`$9-wide slit and the $`L`$-grism were used with a 58-mas pixel scale. The achievable spectral resolution is $``$140 at 3.5 $`\mu `$m. A standard telescope nodding technique, with a throw of 7 arcsec along the slit, was employed to subtract background emission. ULIRGs and corresponding standard stars were observed with an airmass difference of $`<`$0.1 to correct for the transmission of the Earth’s atmosphere, and to provide flux calibration.

Standard data analysis procedures were employed, using IRAF 222 IRAF is distributed by the National Optical Astronomy Observatories, which are operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. (AURA), under cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation.. Initially, bad pixels were replaced with interpolated signals from the surrounding pixels. Bias was subsequently subtracted from the obtained frames and the frames were divided by a spectroscopic flat frame. Finally the spectra of ULIRGs and standard stars were extracted. Wavelength calibration was performed taking into account the wavelength-dependent transmission of the Earth’s atmosphere. The spectra of ULIRGs were divided by the observed spectra of standard stars, multiplied by the spectra of blackbodies with temperatures appropriate to individual standard stars (Table 2), and then flux-calibrated.

Appropriate binning of spectral elements was performed, particularly at $`\lambda _{observed}<3.3`$ $`\mu `$m in the observed frame, so as to give an adequate signal-to-noise ratio in each element. The resulting spectral resolution $`R`$ at $`\lambda _{observed}<3.3`$ $`\mu `$m is $`{}_{}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{<}`$100. Although the Earth’s atmospheric transmission curve at 2.8–3.3 $`\mu `$m is highly wavelength-dependent if observed at high spectral resolution of $`R>1000`$ (Figure 1a), it is fairly smooth at lower spectral resolutions, with R $`{}_{}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{<}`$ 100 (Figure 1b). Thus, even if the net positions of the target object and standard star on the slit differ slightly (on the sub-pixel scale) along the wavelength direction, the standard data analysis described above is expected to produce no significant spurious features in spectra with R $`{}_{}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{<}`$ 100.

## 3 Results

Figure 2 shows flux-calibrated 2.8–4.1 $`\mu `$m spectra of the seven ULIRGs. Since our slit spectra cover physical scales larger than a few hundred pc in all the ULIRGs, emission from both AGNs and compact (less than a few hundred pc) starbursts should be fully detected.

All the ULIRGs clearly show the 3.3 $`\mu `$m PAH emission. To estimate its flux, luminosity, and rest-frame equivalent width, we make the reasonable assumption that the profiles of the 3.3 $`\mu `$m PAH emission in these ULIRGs are similar to those of Galactic star-forming regions and nearby starburst galaxies; the main emission profile then extends between $`\lambda _{rest}`$ $`=`$ 3.24–3.35 $`\mu `$m (Tokunaga et al., 1991; Imanishi & Dudley, 2000). The flux excess above the solid lines in Figure 2 should thus be ascribed to the 3.3 $`\mu `$m PAH emission. Table 3 summarizes the results for the 3.3 $`\mu `$m PAH emission in these seven ULIRGs.

The spectrum of UGC 5101 shows clear 3.4 $`\mu `$m carbonaceous dust absorption with an observed optical depth of $`\tau _{3.4}`$ = 0.65 (Imanishi et al., 2001). In other ULIRGs, there is no clear indication of this feature, partly because this absorption feature is intrinsically not so strong ($`\tau _{3.4}`$/AV $``$ 0.004–0.007; Pendleton et al. 1994).

In addition to the 3.3 $`\mu `$m PAH emission feature, there is another important common feature of the spectra of five ULIRGs (UGC 5101, IRAS 00188$``$0856, IRAS 03250+1606, IRAS 16487+5447, and IRAS 21329$``$2346): the continuum emission is concave in these spectra. At the shorter wavelength side of the 3.3 $`\mu `$m PAH emission, the continuum flux level initially decreases with decreasing wavelength, but then begins to increase again at $`\lambda _{rest}3.05`$ $`\mu `$m. In IRAS 00188$``$0856 and IRAS 03250+1606, the spectra become flat at the shortest wavelength parts ($`\lambda _{rest}`$ $`<`$ 2.7 $`\mu `$m). This behavior is quite similar to that of the infrared-luminous galaxy NGC 4945, in which 3.1 $`\mu `$m H2O ice absorption was clearly detected in an ISO spectrum (Spoon et al., 2000).

Earlier ground-based $`L`$-band spectroscopy has revealed that many bright Galactic sources behind substantial columns of dust and molecular gas show broad 3.1 $`\mu `$m H2O ice absorption, with a main profile peaking at $`\lambda _{rest}`$ $``$ 3.05 $`\mu `$m and extending at least to $`\lambda _{rest}`$ $`=`$ 2.8–3.3 $`\mu `$m (Smith et al. 1989; Smith, Sellgren, & Tokunaga 1993; Smith 1993). A recent ISO spectrum of NGC 4945 suggests that the absorption may extend to wavelengths as short as $`\lambda _{rest}2.5`$ $`\mu `$m (Spoon et al., 2000). In addition to this main profile, a weak longer-wavelength wing at $`\lambda _{rest}=3.3`$–3.7 $`\mu `$m can also be distinguished (Smith et al., 1989, 1993; Smith, 1993). The concave-shaped continuum emission found in the spectra of these five ULIRGs is consistent with the presence of this broad 3.1 $`\mu `$m H2O ice absorption.

Some Seyfert 2 galaxies with lower infrared luminosities were observed on the same nights as these ULIRGs, but no signatures of strong 3.1 $`\mu `$m H2O ice absorption were found. The spectra of standard stars observed before these ULIRGs on the same nights were divided by other standard stars observed after, but the resulting spectra also never showed such signatures. The strong 3.1 $`\mu `$m H2O ice absorption signatures found only in the spectra of the ULIRGs are thus believed to be genuine and intrinsic to the ULIRGs, and not an artifact caused by insufficient cancellation of the Earth’s atmospheric transmission. In fact, for UGC 5101 and IRAS 00188$``$0856, the clear detection of H2O ice absorption at 6.0 $`\mu `$m was also reported by Spoon et al. (2002).

To estimate conservative lower limits for the optical depths of the broad 3.1 $`\mu `$m H2O ice absorption feature, the concave quadratic dashed lines in Figure 2 are adopted as the lowest plausible continuum levels. In IRAS 23234+0946 and IRAS 23327+2913, the presence of strong 3.1 $`\mu `$m H2O ice absorption is not clear in the case of the adopted concave continuum. For the remaining five ULIRGs, the observed optical depths of the 3.1 $`\mu `$m H2O absorption ($`\tau _{3.1}`$) as well as the 3.4 $`\mu `$m carbonaceous dust absorption ($`\tau _{3.4}`$) are summarized in Table 4. These $`\tau _{3.1}`$ values should be regarded as strict lower limits because: (1) linear continuum levels that connect data points at the shortest and longest wavelength parts of the spectra would give rise to larger values of $`\tau _{3.1}`$, and (2) the data points at the shortest wavelength parts, used to determine continuum levels, may still be affected by the 3.1 $`\mu `$m H2O ice absorption feature in some cases. Compared to UGC 5101, IRAS 00188$``$0856 and IRAS 21329$``$2346, the presence of the broad H2O ice absorption feature is apparently less clear in IRAS 03250+1606 and IRAS 16487+5447. However, as long as the spectral shapes of the 3.3 $`\mu `$m PAH emission in these ULIRGs do not differ significantly from those observed so far in starburst galaxies, the continuum flux levels on the shorter wavelength side of the 3.3 $`\mu `$m PAH emission are clearly lower than on the longer wavelength side, which is consistent with the presence of the broad 3.1 $`\mu `$m H2O ice absorption. The very broad emission-like features that extend between $`\lambda _{observed}=`$ 3.6–3.9 $`\mu `$m and 3.4–3.8 $`\mu `$m in IRAS 03250+1606 and IRAS 16487+5447, respectively, cannot be ascribed solely to the 3.3 $`\mu `$m PAH emission; instead, they are caused by a combination of 3.1 $`\mu `$m H2O ice absorption, 3.3 $`\mu `$m PAH emission, and (possibly) 3.4 $`\mu `$m carbonaceous dust absorption.

## 4 Discussion

### 4.1 Energetic importance of weakly obscured starbursts

The observed 3.3 $`\mu `$m PAH to infrared luminosity ratios for these seven ULIRGs are L3.3PAH/LIR $``$ 1–3 $`\times `$10-4 (Table 3), which are 3 to 10 times smaller than the ratios for starburst galaxies (L3.3PAH/LIR $``$ 10-3; Mouri et al. 1900; Imanishi 2002). It can therefore be concluded that weakly obscured (A$`{}_{\mathrm{V}}{}^{}<20`$ mag) nuclear starbursts are not contributing significantly to the infrared luminosities of these ULIRGs.

Since the L3.3PAH values are based on slit spectroscopy measurements, the luminosities of extended (kpc scale) weakly obscured starbursts are not taken into account. However, as mentioned in $`\mathrm{\S }`$1, such extended starbursts have been shown to be energetically insignificant in ULIRGs (Surace & Sanders, 1999; Surace, Sanders, & Evans, 2000; Fischer, 2000). For UGC 5101, Spoon et al. (2002) estimated, based on the ISO’s large aperture measurement, a 6.2 $`\mu `$m PAH emission flux of $`2.0\times 10^{19}`$ W cm-2, so that its luminosity is $`L_{6.2\mathrm{PAH}}6.5\times 10^{42}`$ ergs s-1 in our adopted cosmology. The resulting $`L_{6.2\mathrm{PAH}}/L_{\mathrm{IR}}1.6\times 10^3`$, which is only $`1/4`$ of the ratio typically seen in starburst galaxies ($`6\times 10^3`$: Fischer 2000). Thus, weakly obscured extended starbursts are unlikely to be the dominant energy source in UGC 5101, either. The dominant energy sources should be compact and heavily obscured; for the five ULIRGs, the presence of such buried energy sources is supported by the detection of strong absorption features in our 2.8–4.1 $`\mu `$m spectra.

### 4.2 Geometrical requirements on the buried energy sources

The detection of strong ($`\tau _{3.1}`$ $`>`$ 0.6) 3.1 $`\mu `$m H2O ice absorption can, in principle, provide stringent constraints on the nature of the buried energy sources at the nuclei of the five ULIRGs. The 3.4 $`\mu `$m carbonaceous and 9.7 $`\mu `$m silicate dust absorption features are detectable if an adequate amount of dust in the diffuse inter-stellar medium is present in front of the continuum-emitting energy sources. However, in order for H2O ice absorption to be detected, dust grains covered with an ice mantle must be present in the foreground. Such a situation can arise only when the dust grains are located in molecular clouds, and are sufficiently shielded from the UV radiation from any energy sources either inside or outside the molecular clouds (Whittet et al., 1988). In other words, the detection of strong H2O ice absorption requires that a large amount of dust in molecular clouds be present in front of the continuum-emitting energy sources. Foreground molecular clouds in the host galaxies could be responsible for the strong 3.1 $`\mu `$m H2O ice absorption detected toward the nuclei if the host galaxies were seen from nearly edge-on. However, there is no strong evidence that the host galaxies of these ULIRGs are edge-on (Murphy et al., 1996; Scoville et al., 2000; Kim et al., 2002). Spoon et al. (2002) reported that 6.0 $`\mu `$m H2O ice absorption is systematically stronger in ULIRGs than in less infrared-luminous Seyfert 2 galaxies. These Seyfert 2 galaxies also generally show no detectable or weak ($`\tau _{3.1}<0.2`$) 3.1 $`\mu `$m H2O ice absorption (Imanishi et al. 2002, in preparation). The systematically larger optical depths of H2O ice absorption toward the nuclei of ULIRGs can reasonably be explained by a larger amount of highly concentrated molecular gas (and dust) in their nuclei (Sanders & Mirabel, 1996). We thus regard it as likely that the strong ($`\tau _{3.1}`$ $`>`$ 0.6) 3.1 $`\mu `$m H2O ice absorption detected toward the nuclei of these five ULIRGs are caused by nuclear concentrations of molecular gas and dust. Note that, although the host galaxy of NGC 4945 is viewed edge-on (Ables et al., 1987), a significant fraction of the strong 3.1 $`\mu `$m H2O ice absorption ($`\tau _{3.1}0.9`$; Spoon et al. 2000) is likely to originate in a highly concentrated nuclear component of ice-covered dust grains, on a scale of less than a few hundred pc (Brock et al., 1988).

In the case of normal starbursts, it seems reasonable to assume that the continuum-emitting sources and molecular gas and dust are spatially well mixed (Soifer et al., 2000). A detailed infrared study of the nearby starburst galaxy M82 suggests that the mixed-dust geometry is a better fit to the observed data than a foreground screen dust distribution (McLeod et al., 1993). Since the oscillator strengths of species are fixed, there are upper limits on the absorption optical depths that can be produced by the mixed-dust geometry (unless unusual abundances are considered). This is because the foreground, less-obscured, and therefore less-attenuated, emission (which shows only weak absorption features) will dominate the observed fluxes. In practice, nearby starburst galaxies such as M82 and NGC 253 show weak ($`\tau `$ $``$ 0.2) or undetectable absorption by H2O ice (Sturm et al., 2000) or dust grains (Roche et al., 1991; Dudley & Wynn-Williams, 1999; Imanishi & Dudley, 2000). This issue will be discussed quantitatively below.

In Galactic molecular clouds, the optical depth of the H2O ice absorption and dust extinction ($`A_\mathrm{V}`$) are correlated, with a relation given by $`\tau _{3.1}=\alpha \times (A_\mathrm{V}A_{\mathrm{V0}})`$. The value of $`\alpha `$ has been found to be almost constant, $``$0.06, in Galactic molecular clouds, which exhibit various different levels of star-forming activity (Smith et al., 1993; Tanaka et al., 1990; Murakawa, Tamura, & Nagata, 2000). This is because it reflects the abundance of H2O ice relative to dust grains in the regions where an ice mantle can survive; it is therefore unlikely to differ substantially from the Galactic value, even in starburst galaxies. The AV0 value in the above relation is the threshold required for dust grains to be sufficiently shielded from the ambient UV radiation. This value can vary dramatically, from 2–6 mag in quiescent molecular clouds (Taurus and Serpens; Whittet et al. 1988; Eiroa & Hodapp 1989; Murakawa et al. 2000) to 15 mag in active star-forming molecular clouds ($`\rho `$-Oph; Tanaka et al. 1990). In starburst galaxies with a more intense UV radiation field than the $`\rho `$-Oph molecular clouds, $`A_{\mathrm{V0}}`$ is almost certainly larger than 15 mag, but its exact value is unknown. Thus the relation

$`\tau _{3.1}`$ $`=`$ $`0.06\times (A_\mathrm{V}A_{\mathrm{V0}}),`$ (1)
is adopted in starburst galaxies, where $`A_{\mathrm{VO}}>15`$ mag, or

$`\tau _{3.1}`$ $`=`$ $`0.06\times f\times A_\mathrm{V},`$ (2)
where $`f`$ is the fraction of dust that is covered with an ice mantle.

Figures 3a and 3b show schematic diagrams of a mixed-dust geometry. In this geometry, the observed flux I($`\tau _\nu `$) is given by

$`I(\tau _\nu )`$ $`=`$ $`I_0\times {\displaystyle \frac{1e^{\tau _\nu }}{\tau _\nu }},`$ (3)
where $`I_0`$ is an unattenuated intrinsic flux and $`\tau _\nu `$ is the optical depth at each wavelength, which takes different values inside and outside the absorption features. For 3–4 $`\mu `$m continuum emission outside the 3.1 $`\mu `$m H2O ice and 3.4 $`\mu `$m carbonaceous dust absorption features,

$`\tau _{cont}`$ $`=`$ $`0.06\times A_\mathrm{V}`$ (4)
(Rieke & Lebofsky, 1985; Lutz et al., 1996), where, by definition, $`A_\mathrm{V}1.08\times \tau _V`$. At the peak wavelength of the 3.1 $`\mu `$m H2O ice absorption feature,

$`\tau _{ice}`$ $`=`$ $`0.06\times A_\mathrm{V}+0.06\times f\times A_\mathrm{V},`$ (5)
where the first and second terms give the flux attenuation for 3–4 $`\mu `$m continuum and the H2O ice absorption feature, respectively. Thus, the optical depth of the H2O ice absorption feature in an observed 3–4 $`\mu `$m flux is

$`\tau _{3.1}`$ $``$ $`\mathrm{ln}[{\displaystyle \frac{1e^{\tau _{cont}}}{\tau _{cont}}}\times {\displaystyle \frac{\tau _{ice}}{1e^{\tau _{ice}}}}]`$ (6)
$`=`$ $`\mathrm{ln}[(1+f){\displaystyle \frac{1e^{0.06\times A_\mathrm{V}}}{1e^{0.06\times A_\mathrm{V}\times (1+f)}}}]`$ (7)
This last formula implies that, for a fixed $`f`$-value, $`\tau _{3.1}`$ increases with increasing AV, but saturates at a certain value. The $`f`$-value can be constrained based on observations of the nearby starburst galaxy M82. Based on a mixed-dust model, the dust extinction toward the farthest parts of the starburst region is estimated to be AV $``$ 55 mag (McLeod et al., 1993). The observed optical depth of the 3.1 $`\mu `$m H2O ice absorption is $`\tau _{3.1}0.2`$ (Sturm et al., 2000). Based on these values, $`f0.3`$ is obtained. In other words, in the starburst galaxy M82, $`30\%`$ of dust grains are covered with an ice mantle.

If the cores of ULIRGs are simply a scaled-up version of normal starbursts with a mixed-dust geometry and the $`f`$-value is $``$0.3, then $`\tau _{3.1}`$ should be $``$0.2. However, the $`f`$-value is strongly dependent on the fraction of active star-forming regions relative to quiescent molecular gas in molecular clouds. If the cores of ULIRGs are powered by starbursts with a mixed-dust geometry, the $`f`$-value in ULIRGs should be even smaller than in less infrared luminous starburst galaxies (Soifer et al., 2000). Here, however, $`f`$ $``$ 0.3 is adopted for ULIRGs in order to determine a conservative upper limit for $`\tau _{3.1}`$ within the framework of a mixed-dust geometry. Even if this conservative value is adopted, Equation (7) shows that $`\tau _{3.1}`$ cannot be larger than 0.3. Therefore, it can be concluded that the observed $`\tau _{3.1}`$ values of $`>`$0.6 in these five ULIRGs are clearly incompatible with mixed-dust geometry and f $`{}_{}{}^{}{}_{}{}^{<}`$ 0.3. When the contribution from any weakly obscured starburst emission to the observed 3–4 $`\mu `$m fluxes is subtracted, the $`\tau _{3.1}`$ values toward the buried energy sources will be even larger, making this conclusion more robust.

The same argument is applicable to the 3.4 $`\mu `$m carbonaceous dust absorption in UGC 5101 (Imanishi et al., 2001). For the 3.4 $`\mu `$m carbonaceous dust absorption feature,

$`\tau _{carbo}`$ $`=`$ $`0.06\times A_\mathrm{V}+(0.0040.007)\times (1f)\times A_\mathrm{V}`$ (8)
is obtained (Pendleton et al., 1994), where the term $`(1f)`$, the fraction of dust grains not covered by an ice mantle, is included because the 3.4 $`\mu `$m carbonaceous dust absorption feature may be suppressed if the dust grains are covered with an ice mantle (Mennella et al., 2001). Based on the same arguments as above, it can be quantitatively demonstrated that $`\tau _{3.4}`$ cannot be larger than 0.2 in the mixed-dust geometry. The observed large optical depth of $`\tau _{3.4}>0.6`$ in UGC 5101 (Imanishi et al., 2001) is again incompatible with a mixed-dust source geometry.

In order to explain the strong absorption features in these five ULIRGs, dust in a foreground screen must be obscuring the 3–4 $`\mu `$m continuum-emitting energy sources. This configuration requires that the energy sources be centrally concentrated and deeply buried in nuclear dust and molecular gas, as shown in Figure 3c.

### 4.3 What are the centrally-concentrated energy sources?

#### 4.3.1 The case for UGC 5101

The centrally-concentrated nature of the buried energy source in UGC 5101 is naturally explained by a buried AGN (Soifer et al., 2000). Furthermore, as mentioned in $`\mathrm{\S }`$1, the observed rest-frame equivalent widths of the 3.3 $`\mu `$m PAH emission in starburst galaxies should be little changed by dust extinction. The significantly lower equivalent width in UGC 5101 (Table 3) than in starbursts ($``$120 nm; Moorwood 1986; Imanishi & Dudley 2000) also supports the presence of AGNs that produce strong 3–4 $`\mu `$m continuum emission, but essentially no PAH emission.

When our data are combined with ground-based high spatial resolution mid-infrared (8–25 $`\mu `$m) imaging data (Soifer et al., 2000), we can give more insight into the nature of the buried energy source. Soifer et al. (2000) estimated the size of the spatially-unresolved core of UGC 5101 at 12.5 $`\mu `$m to be $`<`$200 pc. If the attenuation of the mid-infrared flux from the spatially-unresolved compact core in UGC 5101 is negligible, the surface brightness of the core emission becomes $`>`$1.0 $`\times `$ 10$`{}_{}{}^{12}L_{}^{}`$ kpc-2 (Soifer et al., 2000). However, the detection of strong 3.4 $`\mu `$m carbonaceous dust and 3.1 $`\mu `$m H2O ice absorption toward the nucleus of UGC 5101 requires that

1. the actual size of the buried centrally-concentrated energy source is substantially smaller than that of the dust and molecular gas, and
2. the dust extinction toward the buried energy source is $`A_\mathrm{V}>115`$ mag (Imanishi et al., 2001).

On point (1), since dust around a centrally-concentrated energy source shows a temperature gradient (see $`\mathrm{\S }`$1), the size of the cooler dust region, which is also responsible for the foreground dust extinction, is larger than that of the $``$250 K dust traced by the 12.5 $`\mu `$m emission ($`<`$200 pc). However, the size of the cool dust emission (traced by the 1.3 mm emission) at the core of the ULIRG Arp 220 has been shown to be compact ($`<`$200 pc; Sakamoto et al. 1999). Furthermore, the sizes of the high density molecular gas regions at the cores of ULIRGs have been estimated to be no more than $``$500 pc in diameter (Solomon et al., 1992). Thus, it seems reasonable to assume that the actual size of the buried centrally-concentrated energy source in UGC 5101 is only a fraction of this, $``$100 pc or less. On point (2), the dust extinction of $`A_\mathrm{V}>115`$ mag means that the flux attenuation at 12.5 $`\mu `$m is more than factor of 25 (Rieke & Lebofsky, 1985). When these corrections are taken into account, the actual surface brightness of the centrally-concentrated buried energy source in UGC 5101 is $`>10^{14}L_{}`$ kpc-2. This exceeds the peak surface brightness of star clusters in starburst galaxies ($``$5 $`\times `$ 10$`{}_{}{}^{13}L_{}^{}`$ kpc-2; Meurer et al. 1997; Soifer et al. 2000) by a factor of more than two. The high surface brightness is best explained by the presence of an energetically important buried AGN in UGC 5101.

If a buried AGN is present at the nucleus of UGC 5101, the dust is expected to show a strong temperature gradient (see $`\mathrm{\S }`$1). Are the available data consistent with its presence? Soifer et al. (2000) could not explicitly find the signature of a temperature gradient based on their imaging data of UGC 5101. Here, it is searched for using spectroscopic data. As mentioned in $`\mathrm{\S }`$1 and Imanishi (2000), if a strong temperature gradient is present in the dust, the optical depth of the 3.4 $`\mu `$m carbonaceous dust absorption feature probes deeper into the dust distribution than that of the 9.7 $`\mu `$m silicate dust absorption. Thus, the $`\tau _{3.4}`$/$`\tau _{9.7}`$ ratio toward the nucleus of UGC 5101 is expected to be significantly larger than the value seen when no significant temperature gradient is present ($`\tau _{3.4}`$/$`\tau _{9.7}0.06`$–0.07; Roche & Aitken 1984, 1985; Pendleton et al. 1994).

After subtracting the contribution from the weakly obscured starburst emission to the observed 3–4 $`\mu `$m flux, the $`\tau _{3.4}`$ value toward the buried AGN at the core of UGC 5101 was estimated to be $``$0.8 (Imanishi et al., 2001), while only a lower limit for the observed $`\tau _{9.7}`$ value ($`>`$1.5) was given by Spoon et al. (2002) based on a measurement with a large aperture using ISO. Although the $`\tau _{9.7}`$ value is a lower limit, its actual value is unlikely to exceed 2.0, judging from the actual spectrum of UGC 5101 (Spoon et al. 2002; their Figure 8). Thus the $`\tau _{3.4}`$/$`\tau _{9.7}`$ ratio is $`>0.4`$. The actual $`\tau _{9.7}`$ value toward the buried AGN in UGC 5101 could be larger than the observed value, because weakly obscured starburst emission is likely to contribute significantly to the observed $``$10 $`\mu `$m ISO flux. However, since the equivalent width of the 6.2 $`\mu `$m PAH emission in the ISO spectrum of UGC 5101 is less than half that of starburst galaxies (Spoon et al., 2002), at least half of the observed continuum flux at $`>`$5 $`\mu `$m should originate in the buried AGN, implying that the $`\tau _{3.4}`$/$`\tau _{9.7}`$ ratio toward the buried AGN is $`>0.2`$. Thus, these spectroscopic data are consistent with the presence of a temperature gradient of dust at the core of UGC 5101.

If the dust around an AGN has a torus-like geometry, low-density clumpy clouds which are directly illuminated by the central AGN can exist at relatively large distances from the AGN along the axis of the torus-geometry dust (the so-called the narrow line regions or NLRs). NLRs produce the strong high-excitation forbidden emission lines seen in AGN. However, in a buried AGN, X-ray dissociation regions (Maloney et al. 1996), rather than NLRs, are expected to be produced around the AGN, so that high-excitation forbidden emission lines will be weak, consistent with the observed data of UGC 5101 (Genzel et al., 1998).

Solomon et al. (1992) and Solomon (2001) found that the infrared to HCN (J=1-0) luminosity ratios in ULIRGs, including UGC 5101 (Gao & Solomon, 2002), roughly follow the relation established in less infrared-luminous starburst galaxies. By regarding the HCN (J=1-0) luminosities as a tracer of the mass of high density ($`>`$104 cm-3) molecular gas where star-formation actually occurs, Solomon et al. (1992) argued that the infrared luminosities of ULIRGs are powered by starbursts. However, in the luminous inner regions (central few hundred pc) of ULIRGs, the gas pressures - and therefore molecular gas densities - are inevitably extremely high, whether the energy sources are starbursts or AGNs (Barvainis et al., 1997; Maloney, 1999). The relative constancy of the infrared to HCN luminosity ratio from less infrared luminous starburst galaxies to ULIRGs simply indicates that much of the infrared emission arises from dust in dense molecular clouds, which is inevitable whatever the sources of the luminosities of ULIRGs.

#### 4.3.2 The other ULIRGs

For the two ULIRGs which do not show strong 3.1 $`\mu `$m H2O ice absorption (IRAS 23234+0946 and IRAS 23327+2913), there is no strong observational evidence for the presence of buried AGNs. However, for the other four ULIRGs which show strong 3.1 $`\mu `$m H2O absorption (IRAS 00188$``$0856, IRAS 03250+1606, IRAS 16487+5447, and IRAS 21329$``$2346), the centrally-concentrated nature of their buried energy sources and systematically (roughly a factor of two) lower-equivalent-width PAH emission than starbursts (Table 3) are also naturally explained by the presence of energetically important, buried AGNs. Assuming that approximately half of the observed 3–4 $`\mu `$m fluxes originate in buried AGNs, the $`\tau _{3.1}`$ and $`\tau _{3.4}`$ toward the buried AGNs are twice as large as the observed values. These $`\tau _{3.1}`$ and $`\tau _{3.4}`$ values reflect the column density of foreground dust, toward the buried AGNs, covered with and without an ice mantle, respectively ($`\mathrm{\S }`$4.2). Based on the relation of $`\tau _{3.1}`$/AV $``$ 0.06, $`\tau _{3.4}`$/AV $``$ 0.004–0.007 ($`\mathrm{\S }`$ 4.2), and $`A_{34\mu \mathrm{m}}/A_\mathrm{V}`$ $``$ 0.06 ($`\mathrm{\S }`$ 1), and on a foreground screen dust model ($`\mathrm{\S }`$ 1), it is found that the dereddened 3–4 $`\mu `$m dust emission luminosities powered by the AGNs could be comparable to the infrared luminosities of these four ULIRGs.

It is sometimes argued that ULIRGs with cool far-infrared colors cannot be powered by AGNs because AGNs show warm far-infrared colors (e.g., Downes & Solomon 1998). Indeed, many known Seyfert 2 galaxies show warm far-infrared colors (de Grijp, Miley, & Lub, 1985). However, as mentioned in $`\mathrm{\S }`$4.2, the systematically higher detection rate of H2O ice absorption in ULIRGs, as compared to less infrared luminous Seyfert 2 galaxies, is naturally explained by a higher column density of nuclear dust in ULIRGs. This explanation is supported by imaging data at $``$10 $`\mu `$m: while emission from the nuclei of less infrared luminous Seyfert 2 galaxies is argued to be optically thin at $``$10 $`\mu `$m (Alonso-Herrero et al., 2001), that from the nuclei of ULIRGs is estimated to be optically thick (Soifer et al., 2002). The higher column densities of dust around buried AGNs in ULIRGs can naturally produce infrared spectral energy distribution with cooler color than in less infrared luminous Seyfert 2 galaxies. It is quite possible that many other ULIRGs with cool far-infrared colors contain energetically important AGNs deeply buried in dust.

Takeuchi, Yoshikawa, & Ishii (2002) have found that a 60 $`\mu `$m luminosity function in the local universe, derived based on $``$15000 galaxies, shows a bump at $`L_{60\mu \mathrm{m}}10^{12}L_{}`$, and suggested that AGN activity begins to be energetically important at $`L_{60\mu \mathrm{m}}{}_{}{}^{>}10_{}^{12}L_{}`$. This result also favors the buried AGN scenario in the majority of nearby ULIRGs.

## 5 Summary

Strong ($`\tau _{3.1}>0.6`$) 3.1 $`\mu `$m H2O ice absorption has been detected toward the nuclei of five ULIRGs: UGC 5101, IRAS 00188$``$0856, IRAS 03250+1606, IRAS 16487+5447, and IRAS 21329$``$2346. All these ULIRGs have cool far-infrared colors and are classified optically as LINERs. This detection requires a foreground screen dust geometry, which is best explained if centrally-concentrated, compact energy sources are buried in nuclear dust and molecular gas. For all the ULIRGs, the observed equivalent widths of the 3.3 $`\mu `$m PAH emission are significantly lower than those of starburst galaxies. These observational data are naturally explained by the presence of AGNs deeply buried in dust, and support our previous arguments that LINER ULIRGs with cool far-infrared colors may possess energetically important, buried AGNs.

We are grateful to Drs. J. Rayner, B. Golisch, H. Terada, K. Aoki, B. Potter, D. Scarla, and S. Harasawa for their support during our IRTF and Subaru observing runs. We also thank Dr. C. C. Dudley for his useful comments, and Dr. Y. Gao for personally showing his preprint prior to publication. PRM is supported by the NSF under grant AST-9900871. This research made use of the NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database (NED), which is operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.