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

(Abridged) We present near-IR photometry of a selected sample of southern hemisphere E+A galaxies. The sample includes 50 galaxies from nearby and distant clusters as well as E+A galaxies from the field. 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 more distant clusters. 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 rest-frame 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.
Comment: Accepted for publication in the Astronomical Journal. 48 pages, uses AAS LaTeX macros v5.0. Includes 2 tables, 9 figures