2003/07/31 by Gregory Rudnick, Hans-Walter Rix, Hans‐Walter Rix +21 · 3 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Astronomy and Astrophysical Research #Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena #Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1086/379628
published as Astrophys.J.599:847-864,2003 · 19 pages, 12 figures, Accepted for Publication in the Dec. 20, 2003 edition of the Astrophysical Journal. Minor changes made to match the accepted version including short discussions on the effects of clustering and on possible systematic effects resulting from photometric redshift errors
arxiv created 2003/09/09 · openalex publication_date 2003/12/20 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/31
We present the evolution of the rest-frame optical luminosity density j , the integrated rest-frame optical color, and the stellar mass density, ρ * , for a sample of K s band-selected galaxies in the Hubble Deep Field-South (HDF-S). We derived j in the rest-frame U , B , and V bands and found that j increases by a factor of 1.9 ± 0.4, 2.9 ± 0.6, and 4.9 ± 1.0 in the V , B , and U rest-frame bands, respectively, between redshifts of 0.1 and 3.2. We derived the luminosity-weighted mean cosmic ( U - B ) rest and ( B - V ) rest colors as a function of redshift. The colors bluen almost monotonically with increasing redshift; at z = 0.1, the ( U - B ) rest and ( B - V ) rest colors are 0.16 and 0.75, respectively, while at z = 2.8 they are -0.39 and 0.29, respectively. We derived the luminosity-weighted mean M / L , using the correlation between ( U - V ) rest and log M / L that exists for a range in smooth star formation histories (SFHs) and moderate extinctions. We have shown that the mean of individual M / L estimates can overpredict the true value by ~70%, while our method overpredicts the true value by only ~35%. We find that the universe at z ~ 3 had ~10 times lower stellar mass density than it does today in galaxies with L > 1.4 × 10 10 h L ☉ . Half of the stellar mass of the universe was formed by z ~ 1-1.5. The rate of increase in ρ * with decreasing redshift is similar to but above that for independent estimates from the HDF-N, but it is slightly less than that predicted by the integral of the SFR( z ) curve.