E+A galaxies in the near-IR: Broad band photometry

We present near-IR photometry of a selected sample of southern hemisphere E+A galaxies. The sample includes 50 galaxies from nearby (z ∼ 0.05) and distant (z ∼ 0.3) clusters as well as E+A galaxies from the field (z ∼ 0.1). We also observed 13 normal early-type galaxies from the field and from clusters to be compared with the E+A sample. The photometry includes J , H and Ks apparent magnitudes and colors. Observed colors are obtained from the apparent total magnitudes and compared to spectrophotometric models of galaxy evolution GISSEL96. There is an overall agreement between integrated colors of models and observed ones, for both the E+A located in clusters and in the field, at z . 0.1. However, large differences are found between colors predicted from models and those observed in E+A galaxies located in clusters at z ∼ 0.3. We also compute rest-frame colors for all the galaxies using two different sets of K-corrections, and obtain average colors for all the samples. We investigate systematic properties of the E+A sample as a function of their environment. Results seem to indicate that cluster E+As (at low redshift) are bluer than field E+As at z ∼ 0.1. Even this conclusion does not depend whether we use comoving or rest-frame colors, nor on the models used to obtain restframe colors; the difference is not significant enough, considering color dispersions between the samples. If differences are real, they could imply different stellar content for the E+A galaxies located in the field, compared to the cluster E+A. Subject headings: galaxies: fundamental parameters — galaxies: photometry galaxies: stellar content