The VIMOS-VLT Deep Survey

Galaxy luminosity function per morphological type up to z = 1.2

¹ Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Marseille (UMR 6110), CNRS-Université de Provence, BP 8, 13376 Marseille Cedex 12, France e-mail: olivier.ilbert1@bo.astro.it
² Università di Bologna, Dipartimento di Astronomia, via Ranzani 1, 40127 Bologna, Italy
³ INAF - Osservatorio Astronomico di Bologna, via Ranzani 1, 40127 Bologna, Italy
⁴ INAF - IASF, via Bassini 15, 20133 Milano, Italy
⁵ Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de l'Observatoire Midi-Pyrénées (UMR 5572), CNRS-Université Paul Sabatier, 14 avenue E. Belin, 31400 Toulouse, France
⁶ INAF - IRA, via Gobetti 101, 40129 Bologna, Italy
⁷ INAF - Osservatorio Astronomico di Capodimonte, via Moiariello 16, 80131 Napoli, Italy
⁸ Max-Planck-Institut für Astrophysik, Karl-Schwarzschild-Str. 1, 85740 Garching bei München, Germany
⁹ Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris (UMR 7095), 98 bis boulevard Arago, 75014 Paris, France
¹⁰ European Southern Observatory, Karl-Schwarzschild-Str. 2, 85748 Garching bei München, Germany
¹¹ INAF - Osservatorio Astronomico di Brera, via Brera 28, 20121 Milano, Italy
¹² Observatoire de Paris-LERMA, 61 avenue de l'Observatoire, 75014 Paris, France

Received: 14 June 2005
Accepted: 16 January 2006

Abstract

Aims.We have computed the evolution of the rest-frame B-band luminosity function (LF) for bulge and disk-dominated galaxies since .

Methods.We use a sample of 605 spectroscopic redshifts with in the Chandra Deep Field South from the VIMOS-VLT Deep Survey, 3555 galaxies with photometric redshifts from the COMBO-17 multi-color data, coupled with multi-color HST/ACS images from the Great Observatories Origin Deep Survey. We split the sample in bulge- and disk-dominated populations on the basis of asymmetry and concentration parameters measured in the rest-frame B-band.

Results.We find that at , the LF slope is significantly steeper for the disk-dominated population ( ± 0.07) compared to the bulge-dominated population ( ± 0.13). The LF of the bulge-dominated population is composed of two distinct populations separated in rest-frame color: 68% of red and bright galaxies showing a strongly decreasing LF slope  ± 0.21, and 32% of blue and more compact galaxies which populate the LF faint-end. We observe that red bulge-dominated galaxies are already well in place at , but the volume density of this population is increasing by a factor 2.7 between and . It may be related to the building-up of massive elliptical galaxies in the hierarchical scenario. In addition, we observe that the blue bulge-dominated population is dimming by 0.7 mag between and . Galaxies in this faint and more compact population could possibly be the progenitors of the local dwarf spheroidal galaxies.