A new measurement of the evolving near-infrared galaxy luminosity function out to z≃ 4: a continuing challenge to theoretical models of galaxy formation

By M. Cirasuolo, R. McLure, J. Dunlop, O. Almaini, S. Foucaud, C. Simpson. 2008

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We present the most accurate measurement to date of cosmological evolution of the near-infrared galaxy luminosity function, from the local Universe out to z ≃ 4. The analysis is based on a large and highly complete sample of galaxies selected from the first data release of the UKIDSS Ultra Deep Survey. Exploiting a master catalogue of K- and z-band selected galaxies over an area of 0.7 deg 2 , we analyse a sample of ≃50000 galaxies, all with reliable photometry in 16 bands from the far-ultraviolet to the mid-infrared. The unique combination of a large area and depth provided by the Ultra Deep Survey allows us to trace the evolution of the K-band luminosity function with unprecedented accuracy. In particular, via a maximum-likelihood analysis we obtain a simple parametrization for the luminosity function and its cosmological evolution, including both luminosity and density evolution, which provides an excellent description of the data from z = 0 up to z ≃ 4. We find differential evolution for galaxies dependent on galaxy luminosity, revealing once again the 'downsizing behaviour' of galaxy formation. Finally, we compare our results with the predictions of the latest theoretical models of galaxy formation, based on both semi-analytical prescriptions and full hydrodynamical simulations.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/9f1ab0060248eb69bcab2ff6709d15340d3eb13a

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Citations in the corpus

The dependence of star formation activity on environment and stellar mass at z∼ 1 from the HiZELS-Hα survey (2010, background): “…out to z ∼ 1.5, by revealing that the most massive galaxies are undergoing very little or no star formation, or by finding a population of massive galaxies already in the red sequence (e.g. Bauer et al. 2005; Marchesini et al. 2009; Santini et al. 2009; Fontanot et al. 2009; Cirasuolo et al. 2010).”
CAN MINOR MERGING ACCOUNT FOR THE SIZE GROWTH OF QUIESCENT GALAXIES? NEW RESULTS FROM THE CANDELS SURVEY (2011, methodology): “The HST imaging was supplemented by deep Subaru BV Riz imaging from the Subaru/XMMNewton Deep Survey (SXDS; Furusawa et al. 2008), using the mosaics prepared by Cirasuolo et al. (2010), and by K-band imaging from the UKIDSS UDS Data Release 6 (DR6).”
A PUBLIC Ks-SELECTED CATALOG IN THE COSMOS/UltraVISTA FIELD: PHOTOMETRY, PHOTOMETRIC REDSHIFTS, AND STELLAR POPULATION PARAMETERS, (2013, background): “These galaxies exist in significant numbers already at 2 < z < 5, and their number density evolves fairly quickly over this redshift range (e.g., McLure et al. 2006; Marchesini et al. 2009, 2010; Cirasuolo et al. 2010; Caputi et al. 2011).”
The sizes, masses and specific star formation rates of massive galaxies at 1.3 < z < 1.5: strong evidence in favour of evolution via minor mergers (2012, methodology): “In addition to the available UKIRT near-IR imaging, the UDS is supported by a wide array of multiwavelength data sets, ranging from the X-ray to radio regimes (e.g. Cirasuolo et al. 2010).”
METALLICITY-DEPENDENT QUENCHING OF STAR FORMATION AT HIGH REDSHIFT IN SMALL GALAXIES (2011, background): “C O ] 3 M ay 2 01 2 2 abundance of small galaxies compared to the model predictions indicates that the models tend to form stars too rapidly at high redshift (Fontanot et al. 2009; Marchesini et al. 2009; Cirasuolo et al. 2010).”
A HIGHLY CONSISTENT FRAMEWORK FOR THE EVOLUTION OF THE STAR-FORMING “MAIN SEQUENCE” FROM z ∼ 0–6 (2014, methodology): “Photo-z’s were derived as described by Cirasuolo et al. (2010) and noted in Table 3.”
The VISTA deep extragalactic observations (VIDEO) survey (2012, methodology): “Surveys with ground-based near-IR observations have allowed substantial recent progress in this area (e.g. Cirasuolo et al. 2010; Ono et al. 2010; Caputi et al. 2011), particularly at the bright end of the luminosity function at z ∼ 2 where both area and moderately deep data are required.”
Early type galaxies have been the predominant morphological class for massive galaxies since only z~1 (2011, background): “…the first effect is compensated by the increase of the intrinsic surface brightness (e.g. Marchesini et al. 2007; Prescott, Baldry & James 2009, Cirasuolo et al. 2010) of the galaxies due to having a higher star formation rate in the past, and the fact that their stellar populations are…”
A large Hα survey at z = 2.23, 1.47, 0.84 and 0.40: the 11 Gyr evolution of star-forming galaxies from HiZELS (2012, background): “The photometric redshift (Photo-zs from Ilbert et al. 2009; Cirasuolo et al. 2010) distributions of the sources selected with the 4 narrow-band filters are presented in Figure 3.”
Erratum: From dwarf spheroidals to cD galaxies: simulating the galaxy population in a ΛCDM cosmology (2010, result): “It has been seen in the comparison of earlier models (both our own and those of others) to this and other similar datasets (e.g. Fontana et al. 2006; Marchesini et al. 2009; Lo Faro et al. 2009; Fontanot et al. 2009; Cirasuolo et al. 2010).”
THE STAR FORMATION HISTORY OF MASS-SELECTED GALAXIES IN THE COSMOS FIELD (2010, background): “Here the extrapolations towards faint sources are based on the evolving K-band luminosity function with the fixed faint-end slope presented by Cirasuolo et al. (2010).”
The stellar masses and specific star-formation rates of submillimetre galaxies (2011, methodology): “Specifically, we have used the method presented in Cirasuolo et al. (2007, 2010), based on the Hyperz package utilising both Bruzual & Charlot (2003) and Maraston (2005) models and assuming three different forms of SFH: an instantaneous burst of star-formation, an exponentially declining…”
3D-HST WFC3-SELECTED PHOTOMETRIC CATALOGS IN THE FIVE CANDELS/3D-HST FIELDS: PHOTOMETRY, PHOTOMETRIC REDSHIFTS, AND STELLAR MASSES (2014, methodology): “…the Subaru/XMM-Newton Deep Survey (SXDS, Furusawa et al. 2008) in the B, V , R, i and z-bands.27 We use the mosaics provided by M. Cirasuolo (Cirasuolo et al. 2010).28 We include a u′-band image reduced from CFHT archival data by R. Williams and R. Quadri (private communication).”