Issue |
A&A
Volume 448, Number 1, March II 2006
|
|
---|---|---|
Page(s) | 101 - 121 | |
Section | Extragalactic astronomy | |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361:20053986 | |
Published online | 17 February 2006 |
The evolution of the luminosity functions in the FORS deep field from low to high redshift
II. The red bands
1
Universitäts-Sternwarte München, Scheinerstr. 1, 81679 München, Germany e-mail: gabasch@usm.uni-muenchen.de
2
Max-Planck-Institut für Extraterrestrische Physik, Giessenbachstraße, 85748 Garching, Germany
3
McDonald Observatory, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas 78712, USA
4
Landessternwarte Heidelberg, Königstuhl, 69117 Heidelberg, Germany
5
Institut für Astrophysik, Friedrich-Hund-Platz 1, 37077 Göttingen, Germany
Received:
4
August
2005
Accepted:
11
October
2005
We present the redshift evolution of the restframe galaxy
luminosity function (LF) in the red r', i', and z' bands, as derived
from the FORS Deep Field (FDF), thus extending our earlier results
to longer wavelengths. Using the deep and
homogeneous I-band selected dataset of the FDF, we were able to follow
the red LFs over the redshift range . The
results are based on photometric redshifts for 5558 galaxies derived
from the photometry in 9 filters and achieving an accuracy of
with only ~
%
outliers. A comparison with results from the literature shows the
reliability of the derived LFs. Because of the depth of the FDF, we
can give relatively tight constraints on the faint-end slope α of the LF; the faint-end of the red LFs does not show a
large redshift evolution and is compatible within
to
with a constant slope over the redshift range
. Moreover, the slopes in r', i', and z' are
very similar to a best-fitting value of
for the combined bands. There is a clear trend of α to
steepen with increasing wavelength:
. We
subdivided our galaxy sample into four SED types and determined the
contribution of a typical SED type to the overall LF. We show that
the wavelength dependence of the LF slope can be explained by the
relative contribution of different SED-type LFs to the overall LF,
as different SED types dominate the LF in the blue and red bands.
Furthermore we also derived and analyzed the luminosity density
evolution of the different SED types up to
.
We investigated the evolution of
and
by means of
the redshift parametrization
and
.
Based on the FDF data, we found only a mild brightening
of
(
, and
) and
a decreasing
(
) with increasing
redshift. Therefore, from
to
the characteristic luminosity
increases by ~0.8, ~0.4, and ~0.4 mag in
the r', i', and z' bands, respectively. Simultaneously the
characteristic density decreases by about 40% in all analyzed
wavebands.
A comparison of the LFs with semi-analytical galaxy formation models
by Kauffmann et al. (1999) shows a similar result to the blue bands:
the semi-analytical models predict LFs that describe the data at
low redshift very well, but show growing disagreement with
increasing redshifts.
Key words: galaxies: luminosity function, mass function / galaxies: fundamental parameters / galaxies: high-redshift / galaxies: distances and redshifts / galaxies: evolution
© ESO, 2006
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