Photometric redshift accuracy

We investigate the photometric redshift accuracy achievable with the AKARI infrared data in deep multiband surveys, such as in the North Ecliptic Pole field. We demonstrate that the passage of redshifted polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) and silicate features into the mid-infrared wavelength window covered by AKARI is a valuable means to recover the redshifts of starburst galaxies. To this end, we have collected a sample of ~60 galaxies drawn from the Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey-North Field with spectroscopic redshift 0.5<~zspec<~1.5 and photometry from 3.6 to 24um, provided by the Spitzer, Infrared Space Observatory and AKARI satellites. The infrared spectra are fitted using synthetic galaxy spectral energy distributions which account for starburst and active nuclei emission. For ~90 per cent of the sources in our sample, the redshift is recovered with an accuracy |zphot-zspec|/(1+zspec)~<10%. A similar analysis performed on a set of simulated spectra shows that the AKARI infrared data alone can provide photometric redshifts accurate to |zphot-zspec|/(1+zspec)~10% (1sigma) at z~