The WIRCam Deep Survey I. Counts, colours, and mass-functions derived from near-infrared imaging in the CFHTLS deep fields

By R. Bielby, P. Hudelot, H. McCracken, O. Ilbert, E. Daddi, O. Fèvre, V. Gonzalez-Perez, Jean-Paul Kneib, C. Marmo, Y. Mellier and 3 more. 2011

148 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We present a new near-infrared imaging survey in the four CFHTLS deep fields: the WIRCam Deep Survey or “WIRDS”. WIRDS comprises extremely deep, high quality (FWHM ~ 0.6″) J, H, and Ks imaging covering a total effective area of 2.1 deg2 and reaching AB 50% completeness limits of ≈ 24.5. We combine our images with the CFHTLS to create a unique eight-band ugrizJHKS photometric catalogues in the four CFHTLS deep fields; these four separate fields allow us to make a robust estimate of the effect of cosmic variance for all our measurements. We use these catalogues in combination with ≈ 9800 spectroscopic redshifts to estimate precise photometric redshifts (σΔz/(1 + z) ≲ 0.03 at i < 25), galaxy types, star-formation rates and stellar masses for a unique sample of ≈ 1.8 million galaxies. Our JHKs number counts are consistent with previous studies. We apply the “BzK” selection to our gzK filter set and find that the star forming BzK selection successfully selects 76% of star-forming galaxies in the redshift range 1.4 < z < 2.5 in our photometric catalogue, based on our photometric redshift measurement. Similarly the passive BzK selection returns 52% of the passive 1.4 < z < 2.5 population identified in the photometric catalogue. We present the mass functions of the total galaxy population as a function of redshift up to z = 2 and present fits using double Schechter functions. A mass-dependent evolution of the mass function is seen with the numbers of galaxies with masses of M ≲ 1010.75 still evolving at z ≲ 1, but galaxies of higher mass reaching their present day numbers by z ~ 0.8−1. This is consistent with the present picture of downsizing in galaxy evolution. We compare our results with the predictions of the GALFORM semi-analytical galaxy formation model and find that the simulations provide a relatively successful fit to the observed mass functions at intermediate masses (i.e. 10 ≲ log  (M/M⊙) ≲ 11). However, as is common with semi-analytical predictions of the mass function, the GALFORM results under-predict the mass function at low masses (i.e. log  (M/M⊙) ≲ 10), whilst the fit as a whole degrades beyondredshifts of z ~ 1.2. All photometric catalogues and images are made publicly available from TERAPIX and CADC.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/f51909553f58112ca4ae3af971c5af9fefb3d0e3

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. P. V. van Dokkum
2. P. Hopkins
3. M. Franx
4. L. Hernquist
5. R. Dav'e
6. C. Conroy
7. R. Somerville
8. I. Labbé

In Instrumentation

1. P. V. van Dokkum
2. M. Franx
3. I. Labbé
4. C. Conroy
5. P. Hopkins
6. L. Hernquist
7. R. Dav'e
8. Richard S. Ellis

Citations in the corpus

• The VIMOS VLT Deep Survey final data release: a spectroscopic sample of 35 016 galaxies and AGN out to z ~ 6.7 selected with 17.5 ≤ iAB ≤ 24.75 (2013, methodology): “We have added NIR photometry from the WIRDS survey in J,H, and Ks bands (Bielby et al. 2012).”
• The galaxy stellar mass function at 3.5 ≤z ≤ 7.5 in the CANDELS/UDS, GOODS-South, and HUDF fields (2015, background): “A common feature of predictions from Λ-CDM models has been an over-production of low-mass galaxies, especially at high redshifts (Wang et al. 2008; Bielby et al. 2012; Bower et al. 2012; Guo et al. 2011).”
• COSMOS2020: A Panchromatic View of the Universe to z ∼ 10 from Two Complementary Catalogs (2021, methodology): “The aperture flux errors and magnitude errors are therefore re-scaled with band-dependent correction factors applied to all sources (Bielby et al. 2012); see Mehta et al. (2018) for a detailed description.”
• A SPECTROSCOPIC REDSHIFT MEASUREMENT FOR A LUMINOUS LYMAN BREAK GALAXY AT z = 7.730 USING KECK/MOSFIRE (2015, background): “Additionally, the lowredshift solution can not explain the extremely red IRAC color (used to select this galaxy), and predicts significant detections in the ACS/F814W band, as well as in the ground-based WIRDSK-band image (Bielby et al. 2012).”
• The VIMOS Ultra-Deep Survey: ~10 000 galaxies with spectroscopic redshifts to study galaxy assembly at early epochs 2 < z ≃ 6 (2014, methodology): “Deep infrared imaging has been obtained with the WIRCAM at CFHT in YJHK bands down toKsAB = 24.8 also at 50% completness (Bielby et al. 2012).”
• SEDS: THE SPITZER EXTENDED DEEP SURVEY. SURVEY DESIGN, PHOTOMETRY, AND DEEP IRAC SOURCE COUNTS (2013, background): “Based on the cosmological hydrodynamic simulations of Davé et al. (2006), specifically their favored momentum-driven winds model, this is achieved at 26 AB mag in the 3.6 μm band.”
• The VISTA deep extragalactic observations (VIDEO) survey (2012, methodology): “This is attributed to the lack of a well-defined colour term in converting from the WIRDS photometry to the 2MASS photometry.”
• UltraVISTA: a new ultra-deep near-infrared survey in COSMOS (2012, methodology): “First WFCAM on UKIRT (Casali et al. 2007), then WIRCam on the Canada France Hawaii Telescope (CFHT; Puget et al. 2004), and NEWFIRM at NOAO (Probst 2004) have heralded a new era of major coordinated near-infrared survey programmes (e.g. UKIDSS, Lawrence et al. 2007; NEWFIRM Medium-Band Survey, van D”
• THE COSMOS2015 CATALOG: EXPLORING THE 1 < z < 6 UNIVERSE WITH HALF A MILLION GALAXIES (2016, methodology): “Following Bielby et al. (2012), this factor is computed in each band for the 2 and 3′′ apertures and taken at the ratio between the standard deviation of the flux extracted in empty apertures on the field and the median of the SExtractor errors.”
• CFHTLenS: the relation between galaxy dark matter haloes and baryons from weak gravitational lensing (2013, result): “To assess the stellar mass uncertainty due to photometric redshift errors we therefore compare our mass estimates to those of the CFHT WIRCam Deep Survey (WIRDS; Bielby et al. 2012).”
• The Star Formation Rate Density and Dust Attenuation Evolution over 12 Gyr with the VVDS Surveys (2011, methodology): “…using wide-field mosaic cameras: theBVI VVDS imaging survey (McCracken et al. 2003; Le Fèvre et al. 2004a) with the CFHT-12K camera, theu∗g′r′i′z′ CFHT-Legacy Survey (CFHTLS-D1/W1 field, T0005 release) with the MEGACAM camera and theJHKs WIRDS survey (Bielby et al. 2011) with the WIRCAM camera.”
• Mass assembly in quiescent and star-forming galaxies since z ≃ 4 from UltraVISTA (2013, background): “Wang & White (2008), Bielby et al. (2012), Bower et al. (2012), Guo et al. (2011) show that the models overproduce the density of low-mass galaxies for the full population.”
• A PUBLIC Ks-SELECTED CATALOG IN THE COSMOS/UltraVISTA FIELD: PHOTOMETRY, PHOTOMETRIC REDSHIFTS, AND STELLAR POPULATION PARAMETERS, (2013, background): “…CT, 06520-8101 galaxies is more gradual (e.g., Bundy et al. 2006; Arnouts et al. 2007; Marchesini et al. 2009; Ilbert et al. 2010; Brammer et al. 2011; Bielby et al. 2012), perhaps because this redshift range is also marked by a significant decrease in the star formation rates of these galaxies.”
• 3D-HST WFC3-SELECTED PHOTOMETRIC CATALOGS IN THE FIVE CANDELS/3D-HST FIELDS: PHOTOMETRY, PHOTOMETRIC REDSHIFTS, AND STELLAR MASSES (2014, methodology): “In the NIR, we use JHKS imaging from the WIRCam Deep Survey (WIRDS; McCracken et al. 2010; Bielby et al. 2012) and J1, J2, J3, H1, H2, K from the NEWFIRM Medium-Band Survey (NMBS, Whitaker et al. 2011).”