Estimating Photometric Distances to Ultracool Dwarfs in Next Generation Space-based Infrared Surveys: Synthetic Photometry and New Absolute Magnitude Versus Spectral Type Relations for JWST, Euclid, and Roman Filters

Aniket Sanghi, Michael C. Liu, Trent J. Dupuy, William M. Best, Robert J. Siverd, Zhoujian Zhang

Published 2024-05-18Version 1

We synthesize JWST NIRCam photometry for the F164N, F187N, F212N narrow filters, F140M, F162M, F182M, F210M medium filters, and F115W, F150W, F200W wide filters, Euclid Near Infrared Spectrometer and Photometer (NISP) photometry for the $Y_E J_E H_E$ filters, and Roman Wide Field Instrument (WFI) photometry for the F106, F129, F146, F158, F184 and F213 filters using SpeX prism spectra and parallaxes of 688 field-age and 151 young ($\lesssim$ 200 Myr) ultracool dwarfs (spectral types M6-T9). We derive absolute magnitude-spectral type polynomial relations that enable the calculation of photometric distances for ultracool dwarfs observed with JWST, and to be observed with Euclid and Roman, in the absence of parallax measurements. Additionally, using the synthesized photometry to generate color-color figures can help distinguish high-redshift galaxies from brown dwarf interlopers in survey datasets. In particular, anticipating the upcoming Euclid Early Release Observations, we provide synthetic Euclid colors for ultracool dwarfs in our sample.