The 2df SDSS LRG and QSO survey: evolution of the luminosity function of luminous red galaxies to z= 0.6

By D. Wake, Robert Nichol, Daniel J. Eisenstein, J. Loveday, A. Edge, R. Cannon, I. Smail, D. Schneider, R. Scranton, D. Carson and 16 more. 2006

141 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We present new measurements of the luminosity function (LF) of luminous red galaxies (LRGs) from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) and the 2dF SDSS LRG and Quasar (2SLAQ) survey. We have carefully quantified, and corrected for, uncertainties in the K and evolutionary corrections, differences in the colour selection methods, and the effects of photometric errors, thus ensuring we are studying the same galaxy population in both surveys. Using a limited subset of 6326 SDSS LRGs (with 0.17 < z < 0.24) and 1725 2SLAQ LRGs (with 0.5 < z < 0.6), for which the matching colour selection is most reliable, we find no evidence for any additional evolution in the LRG LF, over this redshift range, beyond that expected from a simple passive evolution model. This lack of additional evolution is quantified using the comoving luminosity density of SDSS and 2SLAQ LRGs, brighter than M0.2r − 5 log h0.7 = −22.5, which are 2.51 ± 0.03 × 10−7 L Mpc−3 and 2.44 ± 0.15 × 10−7 L Mpc−3, respectively (<10 per cent uncertainty). We compare our LFs to the COMBO-17 data and find excellent agreement over the same redshift range. Together, these surveys show no evidence for additional evolution (beyond passive) in the LF of LRGs brighter than M0.2r − 5 log h0.7 = −21 (or brighter than L*). We test our SDSS and 2SLAQ LFs against a simple ‘dry merger’ model for the evolution of massive red galaxies and find that at least half of the LRGs at z 0.2 must already have been well assembled (with more than half their stellar mass) by z 0.6. This limit is barely consistent with recent results from semi-analytical models of galaxy evolution.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, Global and Planetary Change

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/830be872a6e748518bb64b8854133bcb696c573a

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Citations in the corpus

A Significant Population of Very Luminous Dust-Obscured Galaxies at Redshift z ~ 2 (2008, background): “A recent measurement of the luminosity function by Wake et al. (2006) finds that luminous (i.e., > 4L∗) red galaxies in the local Universe have a space density of ≈ 2.5 × 10−5h370Mpc−3, very comparable to that of the z ≈ 2 DOGs.”
Observational evidence for AGN feedback in early-type galaxies (2007, background): “…population properties of nearbysamples (e.g. Trager et al. 2000; Thomas et al. 2005; Nelan et al.2005; Bernardi et al. 2006; Jimenez et al. 2006) as well as the redshift evolution of luminosity and mass functions of massive galaxies (e.g. Wake et al. 2006; Cimatti et al. 2006; Rodighiero etal.”
The 2dF-SDSS LRG and QSO Survey: the LRG 2-point correlation function and redshift-space distortions (2006, methodology): “…381, 573–588 at O xford Journals on Septem ber 19, 2013 http://m nras.oxfordjournals.org/ D ow nloaded from The clustering and redshift-space distortion results complement the other results from the 2SLAQ Survey, e.g. Wake et al. (2006), Wake et al. (in preparation) and da Ângela et al. (2006).”
THE NUMBER DENSITY AND MASS DENSITY OF STAR-FORMING AND QUIESCENT GALAXIES AT 0.4 ⩽ z ⩽ 2.2 (2011, background): “Furthermore, the most massive galaxies do not appear to evolve significantly at 0< z< 1 (Wake et al. 2006; Brown et al. 2007), implying that they were assembled at higher redshifts.”
Ongoing assembly of massive galaxies by major merging in large groups and clusters from the SDSS (2007, background): “These theories provide a way to recncile the predicted merger-driven mass growth above1011M⊙ in a ΛCDM cosmology with the little growth that is observed in the st llar mass function (e.g., Wake et al. 2006; Brown et al. 2007).”
The Hierarchical Build-Up of Massive Galaxies and the Intracluster Light since z = 1 (2007, background): “There is a growing consensus that massive red galaxies were more or less in place by z 1 (e.g.,Wake et al. 2006; Cimatti et al. 2006; Bundy et al. 2006).”
Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA): the galaxy stellar mass function at z < 0.06 (2011, background): “Overall the cosmic stellar mass density i observed to grow by a factor of 10 betweenz ∼ 2–3 andz = 0 (Dickinson et al. 2003; Elsner et al. 2008) with significantly less relative growth in massive> 1011M⊙ galaxies sincez ∼ 1– 2 (Wake et al. 2006; Pozzetti et al. 2010; Caputi et al. 2011).”
The Evolving Luminosity Function of Red Galaxies (2006, background): “Despite these difficulties, several groups have used measurements of the space density of galaxies with redshift to constrain red galaxy evolution and assembly (e.g., Lilly et al. 1995; Lin et al. 1999; Chen et al. 2003; Bell et al. 2004; Bundy et al. 2006;Willmer et al. 2006;Wake et al. 2006).”
Galaxy Zoo: the dependence of morphology and colour on environment (2008, background): “The static nature of the massive elliptical populations has been confirmed by dedicated studies of luminous, red galaxies (LRGs), which find very little evolution in their number density or properties sincez ∼ 1 (Wake et al. 2006).”
Red Galaxy Growth and the Halo Occupation Distribution (2008, methodology): “Despite these difficulties, there is increasing evidence that the stellar masses of the most massive galaxies grow by 50% or less at z < 1 (e.g., Bundy et al. 2006; Cimatti et al. 2006;Wake et al. 2006; Brown et al. 2007; Scarlata et al. 2007).”
Stellar population models at high spectral resolution (2011, background): “Our preliminary attempt with these libraries (Maraston et al. 2009a) allowed us to improve upon a long-standing mismatch between the colours of luminous red galaxies in SDSS and stellar population models based on theoretical stellar spectra (Eisenstein et al. 2001; Wake et al. 2006).”
Stellar masses of SDSS-III/BOSS galaxies at z ∼ 0.5 and constraints to galaxy formation models (2012, background): “Such limited evolution for the most massive galaxies belowz ∼ 1 is also supported by luminosity function studies (Wake et al. 2006; Cool et al.2008) as well as by the lack of evolution of galaxy clustering (Wakeet al. 2008; Tojeiro & Percival 2010).”
Intrinsic alignments of SDSS-III BOSS LOWZ sample galaxies (2014, methodology): “To compute absolute magnitudes, we use distances in the units of h−1Mpc for distance modulus computation and then apply k + e corrections (to z = 0) as described in Wake et al. (2006).”
Constraints on intrinsic alignment contamination of weak lensing surveys using the MegaZ-LRG sample (2010, methodology): “…et al. (2009) k+e-corrections display a slightly steeper increase with redshift, yieldingg− i corrections that are 0.03 lower at the redshift of the SDSS Main samples and about 0.1 higher at the mean redshift of the full MegaZ-LRG sample compared to the mean of the Wake et al. (2006) models.”