The VIMOS Public Extragalactic Redshift Survey (VIPERS)

A precise measurement of the galaxy stellar mass function and the abundance of massive galaxies at redshifts 0.5 < z < 1.3^⋆

¹ INAF – Osservatorio Astronomico di Bologna, via Ranzani 1, 40127 Bologna, Italy
e-mail: iary.davidzon@unibo.it
² Dipartimento di Fisica e Astronomia – Università di Bologna, viale Berti Pichat 6/2, 40127 Bologna, Italy
³ Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Academia Sinica, PO Box 23-141, Taipei 10617, Taiwan
⁴ Aix Marseille Université, CNRS, LAM (Laboratoire d’Astrophysique de Marseille) UMR 7326, 13388 Marseille, France
⁵ Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope, 65–1238 Mamalahoa Highway, Kamuela, HI 96743, USA
⁶ SUPA, Institute for Astronomy, University of Edinburgh, Royal Observatory, Blackford Hill, Edinburgh EH9 3HJ, UK
⁷ INAF – Istituto di Astrofisica Spaziale e Fisica Cosmica Milano, via Bassini 15, 20133 Milano, Italy
⁸ INAF – Osservatorio Astronomico di Trieste, via G. B. Tiepolo 11, 34143 Trieste, Italy
⁹ INAF – Osservatorio Astronomico di Brera, via Brera 28, 20122 Milano, via E. Bianchi 46, 23807 Merate, Italy
¹⁰ Dipartimento di Fisica, Università di Milano-Bicocca, P.zza della Scienza 3, 20126 Milano, Italy
¹¹ INAF – Osservatorio Astrofisico di Torino, 10025 Pino Torinese, Italy
¹² Aix-Marseille Université, CNRS, CPT (Centre de Physique Théorique) UMR 7332, 13288 Marseille, France
¹³ Dipartimento di Matematica e Fisica, Università degli Studi Roma Tre, via della Vasca Navale 84, 00146 Roma, Italy
¹⁴ INFN, Sezione di Roma Tre, via della Vasca Navale 84, 00146 Roma, Italy
¹⁵ INAF – Osservatorio Astronomico di Roma, via Frascati 33, 00040 Monte Porzio Catone (RM), Italy
¹⁶ Laboratoire Lagrange, UMR 7293, Université de Nice Sophia-Antipolis, CNRS, Observatoire de la Côte d’Azur, 06300 Nice, France
¹⁷ Institute of Physics, Jan Kochanowski University, ul. Swietokrzyska 15, 25-406 Kielce, Poland
¹⁸ Department of Particle and Astrophysical Science, Nagoya University, Furo-cho, Chikusa-ku, 464-8602 Nagoya, Japan
¹⁹ INFN, Sezione di Bologna, viale Berti Pichat 6/2, 40127 Bologna, Italy
²⁰ Institut d’Astrophysique de Paris, UMR 7095 CNRS, Université Pierre et Marie Curie, 98 bis Boulevard Arago, 75014 Paris, France
²¹ Astronomical Observatory of the Jagiellonian University, Orla 171, 30-001 Cracow, Poland
²² National Centre for Nuclear Research, ul. Hoza 69, 00-681 Warszawa, Poland
²³ Universitätssternwarte München, Ludwig-Maximillians Universität, Scheinerstr. 1, 81679 München, Germany
²⁴ Max-Planck-Institut für Extraterrestrische Physik, 84571 Garching b. München, Germany
²⁵ Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation, Dennis Sciama Building, University of Portsmouth, Burnaby Road, Portsmouth, PO1 3FX, UK
²⁶ INAF – Istituto di Astrofisica Spaziale e Fisica Cosmica Bologna, via Gobetti 101, 40129 Bologna, Italy
²⁷ INAF – Istituto di Radioastronomia, via Gobetti 101, 40129, Bologna, Italy
²⁸ Università degli Studi di Milano, via G. Celoria 16, 20130 Milano, Italy
²⁹ Institut Universitaire de France, 103 bd. Saint-Michel, 75005 Paris, France

Received: 19 March 2013
Accepted: 12 July 2013

Abstract

We measure the evolution of the galaxy stellar mass function from z = 1.3 to z = 0.5 using the first 53   608 redshifts of the ongoing VIMOS Public Extragalactic Survey (VIPERS). Thanks to its large volume and depth, VIPERS provides a detailed picture of the galaxy distribution at z ≃ 0.8, when the Universe was ≃7 Gyr old. We carefully estimate the uncertainties and systematic effects associated with the SED fitting procedure used to derive galaxy stellar masses. We estimate the galaxy stellar mass function at several epochs between z = 0.5 and 1.3, discussing the amount of cosmic variance affecting our estimate in detail. We find that Poisson noise and cosmic variance of the galaxy mass function in the VIPERS survey are comparable to the statistical uncertainties of large surveys in the local universe. VIPERS data allow us to determine with unprecedented accuracy the high-mass tail of the galaxy stellar mass function, which includes a significant number of galaxies that are too rare to detect with any of the past spectroscopic surveys. At the epochs sampled by VIPERS, massive galaxies had already assembled most of their stellar mass. We compare our results with both previous observations and theoretical models. We apply a photometric classification in the (U − V) rest-frame colour to compute the mass function of blue and red galaxies, finding evidence for the evolution of their contribution to the total number density budget: the transition mass above which red galaxies dominate is found to be about 10^10.4  ℳ_⊙ at z ≃ 0.55, and it evolves proportionally to (1 + z)³. We are able to separately trace the evolution of the number density of blue and red galaxies with masses above 10^11.4  ℳ_⊙, in a mass range barely studied in previous work. We find that for such high masses, red galaxies show a milder evolution with redshift, when compared to objects at lower masses. At the same time, we detect a population of similarly massive blue galaxies, which are no longer detectable below z = 0.7. These results show the improved statistical power of VIPERS data, and give initial promising indications of mass-dependent quenching of galaxies at z ≃ 1.