2001/10/25 by Niv Drory, N. Drory, R. Bender +9 · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #Astronomy #Astronomy and Astrophysical Research #Astrophysics #Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena #Galaxy #Galaxy formation and evolution #Luminosity #Luminosity function #Physics #Redshift #Redshift survey #Star formation #Stellar mass #Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1086/338270
published as Astrophys.J. 562 (2001) L111-L114 · 4 pages, 5 figures, accepted for publication in ApJ Letters
arxiv created 2001/10/25 · openalex publication_date 2002/07/26 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
We derive the number density evolution of massive field galaxies in the redshift range 0.4 < z < 1.2 using the K -band-selected field galaxy sample from the Munich Near-IR Cluster Survey. We rely on spectroscopically calibrated photometric redshifts to determine distances and absolute magnitudes in the rest-frame K band. To assign mass-to-light ratios, we use an approach that maximizes the stellar mass for any K -band luminosity at any redshift. We take the mass-to-light ratio, / L K , of a simple stellar population that is as old as the universe at the galaxy's redshift as a likely upper limit. This is the most extreme case of pure luminosity evolution, and in a more realistic model / L K will probably decrease faster with redshift because of increased star formation. We compute the number density of galaxies more massive than 2 × 10 10 , 5 × 10 10 , and 1 × 10 11 h -2 ☉ , finding that the integrated stellar mass function is roughly constant for the lowest mass limit and that it decreases with redshift by a factor of ~3 and by a factor of ~6 for the two higher mass limits, respectively. This finding is in qualitative agreement with models of hierarchical galaxy formation, which predict that the number density of ~ M * objects is fairly constant while it decreases faster for more massive systems over the redshift range that our data set probes.