Spitzer survey of submillimeter galaxies

From our data, we find that IRAC colors of SMGs are much more uniform as compared with rest-frame UV and optical colors, and z>1.5 SMGs tend to be redder in their mid-IR colors than both field galaxies and lower-z SMGs. However, the IRAC colors of the SMGs overlap those of field galaxies sufficiently that color-magnitude and color-color selection criteria suggested in the literature to identify SMG counterparts produce ambiguous counterparts within an 8" radius in 20%-35% of cases.

We use a rest-frame J-H versus H-K color-color diagram and a S24/S8.0 versus S8.0/S4.5 color-color diagram to determine that 13%-19% of our sample are likely to contain active galactic nuclei which dominate their mid-IR emission.