The K20 survey. VI. The distribution of the stellar masses in galaxies up to z 2

By A. Fontana, L. Pozzetti, I. Donnarumma, A. Renzini, A. Cimatti, G. Zamorani, N. Menci, E. Daddi, E. Giallongo, M. Mignoli and 7 more. 2004

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We present a detailed analysis of the stellar mass content of galaxies up to $z=2.5$ as obtained from the K20 spectrophotometric galaxy sample. We have applied and compared two different methods to estimate the stellar mass $M_*$ from broad-band photometry: a Maximal Age approach, where we maximize the age of the stellar population to obtain the maximal mass compatible with the observed $R-K$ color, and a Best Fit model, where the best-fitting spectrum to the complete ${\it UBVRIzJK}_{\rm s}$ multicolor distribution is used. We find that the $M_*/L$ ratio decreases with redshift: in particular, the average $M_*/L$ ratio of early type galaxies decreases with z , with a scatter that is indicative of a range of star-formation time-scales and redshift of formation. More important, the typical $M_*/L$ ratio of massive early type galaxies is larger than that of less massive ones, suggesting that their stellar population formed at higher z . We show that the final K20 galaxy sample spans a range of stellar masses from $M_*=10^9~M_\odot$ to $M_*=10^{12}~M_\odot$: massive galaxies ($M_*\geq10^{11}~M_\odot$) are common at $0.5 1$, the evolution in the normalization of the GSMF appears to be much faster: at $z\simeq 2$, about 35% of the present day stellar mass in objects with $M_* \simeq 10^{11}~M_\odot$ appear to have assembled. We also detect a change in the physical nature of the most massive galaxies: at $z \la 0.7$, all galaxies with $M>10^{11}~M_\odot$ are early type, while at higher z a population of massive star-forming galaxies progressively appears. We finally analyze our results in the framework of Λ -CDM hierarchical models. First, we show that the large number of massive galaxies detected at high z does not violate any fundamental Λ -CDM constraint based on the number of massive DM halos. Then, we compare our results with the predictions of several renditions of both semianalytic as well as hydro-dynamical models. The predictions from these models range from severe underestimates to slight overestimates of the observed mass density at ≤ 2. We discuss how the differences among these models are due to the different implementation of the main physical processes.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation, Statistical and Nonlinear Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/4eb7b773122e823bc2f12e288ef8b01799fc274d

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Citations in the corpus

The Star Formation Main Sequence in the Hubble Space Telescope Frontier Fields (2017, methodology): “Therefore, we assessed the mass completeness limit of our sample by following the procedure outlined in Fontana et al. (2004).”
THE COSMOS-WIRCam NEAR-INFRARED IMAGING SURVEY. I. BzK-SELECTED PASSIVE AND STAR-FORMING GALAXY CANDIDATES AT z ≳ 1.4 (2009, background): “Alternatively stated, half oftoday’s stellar mass appears to be in place byz ∼ 1 (Drory et al. 2005; Fontana et al. 2004).”
Passively Evolving Early-Type Galaxies at 1.4 ≲ z ≲ 2.5 in the Hubble Ultra Deep Field (2005, unknown): “On the other hand, there appear to be too few massive galaxies in these simulations, either passive or star forming (Daddi et al. 2004a, 2004b; Fontana et al. 2004).”
THE RELATION BETWEEN STAR FORMATION RATE AND STELLAR MASS FOR GALAXIES AT 3.5 ⩽ z ⩽ 6.5 IN CANDELS (2014, background): “…starburst attenuation has been known to produce unphysically young stellar population ages for UV selected samples, with best–fit ages often at the edge of the parameter space (Fontana et al. 2004; Reddy et al. 2012; Oesch et al. 2013; Kriek & Conroy 2013; Chevallard et al. 2013; Buat et al. 2014).”
The morgana model for the rise of galaxies and active nuclei (2006, result): “…is related to the cosmic star formation rate (it is simply its integral in time), it is compared with a completely different set of data (Brinchmann & Ellis 2000; Cole et al. 2001; Cohen 2002; Dickinson et al. 2003; Fontana et al. 2003; Drory et al. 2004; Fontana et al. 2004; Gwyn & Hartwick 2005).”
The Morphologies of Massive Galaxies at 1<z<3 in the CANDELS-UDS Field: Compact Bulges, and the Rise and Fall of Massive Disks (2012, background): “…revealed that a substantial population of massive galaxies is already in place by z 2, and that the star formation activity in a significant fraction of these objects largely ceases around this time, ∼3 Gyr after the big bang (e.g. Fontana et al. 2004; Glazebrook et al. 2004; Drory et al. 2005).”
A Herschel view of the far-infrared properties of submillimetre galaxies (2012, methodology): “Stellar masses were then calculated by fitting the multi-wavelength photometryto Bruzual & Charlot (2003) templates through aχ2 minimization, using the method described in Fontana et al. (2004) and updated as in Santini et al. (2009).”
The VIMOS VLT deep survey: the assembly history of the stellar mass in galaxies: from the young to the old universe (2007, unknown): “Additionally, the total K-selected sample covers an area more than 10 times wider than the K20 and the GOODSCDFS sample used by Drory et al. (2005) and 4 times wider than the GOODS-MUSIC field (Fontana et al. 2006).”
A New Photometric Technique for the Joint Selection of Star-forming and Passive Galaxies at 1.4 ≲ z ≲ 2.5 (2004, methodology): “This requires direct spectroscopic identification (e.g., Fontana et al. 2004; Glazebrook et al. 2004), but building large samples of spectroscopically confirmed galaxies at high redshift is a time consuming process.”
The COSMOS2015 galaxy stellar mass function . Thirteen billion years of stellar mass assembly in ten snapshots (2017, methodology): “Article published by EDP Sciences A70, page 1 of 27 To get a continuous view of galaxies’ history, one has to combine low-z estimates (e.g. Fontana et al. 2004, 2006; Pozzetti et al. 2010; Ilbert et al. 2010) with SMFs derived at z > 3 (e.g. McLure et al. 2009; Caputi et al. 2011; Santini et al.…”
An interferometric CO survey of luminous submillimetre galaxies (2005, background): “Other semi-analytical models (Fontana et al. 2004; Granatoet al. 2004) have also modified their recipes so that their models fitthe data.”
The stellar masses of 25 000 galaxies at 0.2 ≤ z ≤ 1.0 estimated by the COMBO-17 survey (2006, background): “We show also near-infrared derived stellar mass functions from MUNICS (Drory et al. 2004a; open circles) in the 0.4 < z ≤ 0.6, 0.6 < z ≤ 0.8, and 0.8 < z ≤ 1.0 bins, and the Schechter fit to the K20-derived mass function of Fontana et al. (2004) in the 0.8 < z ≤ 1.0 bin.”
The WIRCam Deep Survey I. Counts, colours, and mass-functions derived from near-infrared imaging in the CFHTLS deep fields (2011, background): “Bottom left shows the WIRDS D3 data with DEEP2 spectroscopic data (2977 galaxies) and bottom right shows the WIRDS D4 data with the AAOmega spectroscopic redshifts (700 galaxies). verting galaxy luminosity to a stellar mass (Bell et al. 2003; Fontana et al. 2004).”
MERGERS AND BULGE FORMATION IN ΛCDM: WHICH MERGERS MATTER? (2009, methodology): “These are taken from (1) Conroy & Wechsler (2009) (our “default” choice, when no other is specified), (2) Pérez-González et al. (2008b), and (3) Fontana et al. (2004).”
RED NUGGETS AT z ∼ 1.5: COMPACT PASSIVE GALAXIES AND THE FORMATION OF THE KORMENDY RELATION (2008, background): “At higher redshifts a significant fraction of the red galaxies appear to be discs (e.g., Paper VIII, Fontana et al. 2004).”
The Stellar Mass Assembly of Galaxies from z = 0 to z = 4: Analysis of a Sample Selected in the Rest-Frame Near-Infrared with Spitzer (2007, methodology): “It is interesting to notice that the faint-end slope derived by Drory et al. (2005) at z>1.5 is significantly larger than that found by other authors (Fontana et al. 2004; Conselice et al. 2005).”
Stellar Population Diagnostics of Elliptical Galaxy Formation (2006, background): “Several ongoing studies are moving in this directions (e.g., Fontana et al. 2004, Drory et al. 2004, 2005, Bundy, Ellis, & Conselice 2005, Gabasch et al. 2005, Conselice, Blackburne, & Papovich 2005, etc.), but extending the discussion to the general mass assembly of galaxies goes beyond the scope…”
A HIGHLY CONSISTENT FRAMEWORK FOR THE EVOLUTION OF THE STAR-FORMING “MAIN SEQUENCE” FROM z ∼ 0–6 (2014, background): “Masses are obtained from Fontana et al. (2004) as detailed in Table 3.”