PEGASE: a UV to NIR spectral evolution model of galaxies - Application to the calibration of bright galaxy counts

PEGASE is a new spectrophotometric evolution model for starbursts and evolved galaxies of the Hubble sequence. Its main originality is the extension to the near-infrared (NIR) of the atlas of synthetic spectra of Rocca-Volmerange & Guiderdoni (1988) with a revised stellar library including cold star parameters and stellar tracks extended to the TP-AGB and the post-AGB phase. The NIR is coherently linked to the visible and the ultraviolet, so that the model is continuous on an exceptionally large wavelength range from 220 A up to 5 microns. Moreover, a precise algorithm allows to follow very rapid evolutionary phases such as red supergiants or AGB crucial in the NIR. The nebular component is also computed in the NIR. The extinction correction is gas-dependent for spirals and ellipticals. A set of reference synthetic spectra at z=0, to which apply cosmological k- and evolution e- corrections for high-redshift galaxies, is built from fits of observational templates. Because of the lack of visible to NIR spectral templates for each Hubble type, we adopt statistical samples of colors, not fitted by previous models. A first application of this continuous model is to solve the problem of the slope of the bright galaxy counts from B=15 to 19 and of the normalization parameter of the Schechter luminosity function. Code sources, input and output data are available by anonymous ftp or at the WEB address of the authors.