Understanding the co-evolution of galaxies and active galactic nuclei (AGN) requires accurate modeling of dust-obscured systems. Recent surveys using the Mid Infrared Instrument (MIRI) onboard the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) have uncovered a large population of dust obscured AGN, challenging current theoretical frameworks. We present an updated version of the Simulated Infrared Extragalactic Dusty Sky (SIDES) simulation framework. Our updates include modified star-forming and starburst galaxy spectral energy distribution (SED) templates as well as quiescent and AGN templates. We also incorporate a probabilistic assignment of the fraction of the IR emission that is due to an AGN. Our simulations successfully reproduce the observed MIRI source number counts, redshift distributions, and AGN population fractions. We find that AGN dominate at bright flux densities (S_ν 20\, μ Jy while main sequence galaxies dominate at the faint end. We also quantify the effects of cosmic variance, showing that surveys with areas below 25\, arcmin² suffer from 30 \% uncertainty in bright AGN counts. Finally, we provide diagnostic color-color diagrams and joint Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam) and MIRI flux distributions to aid interpretation of current and upcoming JWST surveys.
Vidal et al. (Thu,) studied this question.