THE UV LUMINOSITY FUNCTION OF STAR-FORMING GALAXIES VIA DROPOUT SELECTION AT REDSHIFTS z ∼ 7 AND 8 FROM THE 2012 ULTRA DEEP FIELD CAMPAIGN

By M. Schenker, Brant Robertson, Richard S. Ellis, Yoshiaki Ono, R. McLure, J. Dunlop, A. Koekemoer, R. Bowler, M. Ouchi, E. Curtis-Lake and 6 more. 2012

190 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We present a catalog of high-redshift star-forming galaxies selected to lie within the redshift range z ≃ 7–8 using the Ultra Deep Field 2012 (UDF12), the deepest near-infrared (near-IR) exposures yet taken with the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). As a result of the increased near-IR exposure time compared to previous HST imaging in this field, we probe ∼0.65 (0.25) mag fainter in absolute UV magnitude, at z ∼ 7 (8), which increases confidence in a measurement of the faint end slope of the galaxy luminosity function. Through a 0.7 mag deeper limit in the key F105W filter that encompasses or lies just longward of the Lyman break, we also achieve a much-refined color–color selection that balances high redshift completeness and a low expected contamination fraction. We improve the number of dropout-selected UDF sources to 47 at z ∼ 7 and 27 at z ∼ 8. Incorporating brighter archival and ground-based samples, we measure the z ≃ 7 UV luminosity function to an absolute magnitude limit of MUV = −17 and find a faint end Schechter slope of . Using a similar color–color selection at z ≃ 8 that takes our newly added imaging in the F140W filter into account, and incorporating archival data from the HIPPIES and BoRG campaigns, we provide a robust estimate of the faint end slope at z ≃ 8, . We briefly discuss our results in the context of earlier work and that derived using the same UDF12 data but with an independent photometric redshift technique.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/7a3ec5bec694ba74e83230eecfedbf259836da79

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. Richard S. Ellis
2. R. Bouwens
3. L. Hernquist
4. P. V. van Dokkum
5. P. Oesch
6. M. Franx
7. J. Dunlop
8. P. Hopkins

In Instrumentation

1. Richard S. Ellis
2. P. V. van Dokkum
3. M. Franx
4. R. Bouwens
5. J. Dunlop
6. P. Oesch
7. G. Illingworth
8. I. Labbé

Citations in the corpus

• New Limits on 21cm EoR From PAPER-32 Consistent with an X-Ray Heated IGM at z=7.7 (2013, background): “Observed star formation rates (SFRs) at z = 8 (Bouwens et al. 2010; Schenker et al. 2013) exceed by almost an order of magnitude the threshold of 10−3M /yr Mpc 3 required for UV photons to couple these temperatures (McQuinn & O’Leary 2012).”
• Great Optically Luminous Dropout Research Using Subaru HSC (GOLDRUSH). I. UV Luminosity Functions at $z \sim 4-7$ Derived with the Half-Million Dropouts on the 100 deg$^2$ Sky (2017, background): “Analyses of sources in deep blank fields including the Hubble Ultra Deep field (HUDF) have resulted in identifying z∼4−10 galaxy can- didates down to ∼ −17 mag (Ellis et al. 2013; Schenker et al. 2013; McLure et al. 2013; Bouwens et al. 2015; Finkelstein et al. 2015).”
• PAPER-64 CONSTRAINTS ON REIONIZATION: THE 21 cm POWER SPECTRUM AT z = 8.4 (2015, background): “8 (Bouwens et al. 2010; Schenker et al. 2013) and have detected a few sources at even greater distances (Ellis et al. 2013; Oesch et al. 2013).”
• Using Lyman-α to detect galaxies that leak Lyman continuum (2014, background): “…are available in Lyα, up to the reionisation redshift (e.g. Shapley et al. 2003; Hu et al. 2010; Stark et al. 2010; Guaita et al. 2010, 2011; Dressler et al. 2011; Bielby et al. 2011; Pentericci et al. 2010, 2011; Kulas et al. 2012; Jiang et al. 2013b,a; Ellis et al. 2013; Schenker et al. 2013).”
• THE EVOLUTION OF THE GALAXY STELLAR MASS FUNCTION AT z = 4–8: A STEEPENING LOW-MASS-END SLOPE WITH INCREASING REDSHIFT (2015, methodology): “…with particular advances in measurements of the rest-frame ultraviolet (UV) luminosity function (e.g., Bouwens et al. 2011; Oesch et al. 2012; Schenker et al. 2013b; Lorenzoni et al. 2013; Finkelstein et al. 2015; Bouwens et al. 2015), the rest-frame UV spectral slope (e.g., Finkelstein et…”
• The galaxy luminosity function at z ≃ 6 and evidence for rapid evolution in the bright end from z ≃ 7 to 5 (2014, methodology): “Reassuringly, our fits recover the steep faint-end slopes found in previous studies (Bouwens et al. 2012; McLure et al. 2013; Schenker et al. 2013), showing that our measurement of α is not being strongly influenced by any tension in the fitting process.”
• A CENSUS OF STAR-FORMING GALAXIES IN THE Z ∼ 9–10 UNIVERSE BASED ON HST+SPITZER OBSERVATIONS OVER 19 CLASH CLUSTERS: THREE CANDIDATE Z ∼ 9–10 GALAXIES AND IMPROVED CONSTRAINTS ON THE STAR FORMATION RATE DENSITY AT Z ∼ 9.2 (2012, result): “…represented by an evolution in φ∗ and α (with a more limited evolution in M∗). other recent z ∼ 8 LF results (e.g., Bouwens et al. 2014; Bradley et al. 2012; Schenker et al. 2013; McLure et al. 2013; Schmidt et al. 2014) yield very similar results for M∗ (.0.3 mag), α (.0.2), and φ∗ (< 0.1…”
• Spectroscopic detection of C iv λ1548 in a galaxy at z = 7.045: implications for the ionizing spectra of reionization-era galaxies (2015, background): “The UV luminosities, star formation rates, and stellar masses tend to be lower at z ' 6 (e.g. Smit et al. 2012; McLure et al. 2013; Schenker et al. 2013b; Bouwens et al. 2014a; Salmon et al. 2015; Duncan et al. c© 2015 RAS ar X iv :1 50 4.”
• New Measurements of the Ionizing Ultraviolet Background over 2 < z < 5 and Implications for Hydrogen Reionization (2013, background): “…> 6 indicate that the global star formation rate density declines steeply with redshift over 6 < z < 12 (e.g., Ouchi et al. 2009; Castellano et al. 2010; Bunker et al. 2010; Bouwens et al. 2006, 2008, 2011, 2012; Oesch et al. 2010; McLure et al. 2010, 2013; Schenker et al. 2013; Ellis et al. 2013).”
• A SPECTROSCOPIC REDSHIFT MEASUREMENT FOR A LUMINOUS LYMAN BREAK GALAXY AT z = 7.730 USING KECK/MOSFIRE (2015, background): “…galaxy candidates have been identified at z ∼ 7 − 11 thanks to the exceptional nearinfrared sensitivity of the WFC3/IR camera onboard the Hubble Space Telescope (HST ; e.g., Bouwens et al. 2011, 2015; Schenker et al. 2013; McLure et al. 2013; Oesch et al. 2012, 2014; Finkelstein et al. 2014).”
• Improved upper limits on the 21 cm signal power spectrum of neutral hydrogen at z ≈ 9.1 from LOFAR (2020, background): “The evolution of the observed Ly-α Emitter (LAE) luminosity function at z > 6 (Clément et al. 2012; Schenker et al. 2013) and the Ly-α absorption profile toward very distant quasars (Mortlock 2016; Greig et al. 2017; Davies et al. 2018) are other indirect probes of the EoR.”
• The Dearth of z ∼ 10 Galaxies in All HST Legacy Fields—The Rapid Evolution of the Galaxy Population in the First 500 Myr (2017, methodology): “…out to z ∼ 8, large galaxy samples have now been identified and used for the study of galaxy build up (e.g. Bouwens et al. 2011b, 2015; Bradley et al. 2014; Finkelstein et al. 2012a; Schenker et al. 2013; McLure et al. 2013; Schmidt et al. 2014; Barone-Nugent et al. 2014; Stefanon et al. 2017b).”
• REIONIZATION AFTER PLANCK: THE DERIVED GROWTH OF THE COSMIC IONIZING EMISSIVITY NOW MATCHES THE GROWTH OF THE GALAXY UV LUMINOSITY DENSITY (2015, background): “The steep slope of the UV LF at the −17 mag limit of deep searches for faint galaxies at z ∼ 7–8 suggests that the cut-off is fainter than −17 mag (e.g., B15; McLure et al. 2013; Schenker et al. 2013).”
• The UV continua and inferred stellar populations of galaxies at z ~7-9 revealed by the Hubble Ultra-Deep Field 2012 campaign (2012, methodology): “This analysis will necessarily draw on the new luminosity-function measurements presented by McLure et al. (2013) and Schenker et al. (2013), and on the new measurements of 〈β〉 presented here, because determining the ability of the emerging galaxy population at z = 6–9 to reionize the Universe…”