The miniJPAS survey: Evolution of luminosity and stellar mass functions of galaxies up to z ∼ 0.7

¹ Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (CSIC), PO Box 3004 18080 Granada, Spain
e-mail: luis@iaa.es
² Centro de Estudios de Física del Cosmos de Aragón (CEFCA), Unidad Asociada al CSIC, Plaza San Juan 1, 44001 Teruel, Spain
³ Instituto de Física, Universidade de São Paulo, Rua do Matão 1371, 05508-090 São Paulo, Brazil
⁴ Observatório Nacional – MCTI (ON), Rua General José Cristino 77, São Cristóvão, 20921-400 Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
⁵ Donostia International Physics Center (DIPC), Manuel Lardizabal Ibilbidea 4, San Sebastián, Spain
⁶ IKERBASQUE, Basque Foundation for Science, 48013 Bilbao, Spain
⁷ Instituto de Física, Universidade Federal da Bahia, 40210-340 Salvador, BA, Brazil
⁸ Centro de Estudios de Física del Cosmos de Aragón (CEFCA), Plaza San Juan 1, 44001 Teruel, Spain
⁹ Universidade de São Paulo, Instituto de Astronomia, Geofísica e Ciências Atmosféricas, Rua do Matão 1226, 05508-090 São Paulo, Brazil
¹⁰ Instruments4, 4121 Pembury Place, La Canada Flintridge, CA 91011, USA

Received: 29 November 2023
Accepted: 9 May 2024

Abstract

Aims. We aim to develop a robust methodology for constraining the luminosity and stellar mass functions (LMFs) of galaxies by solely using photometric measurements from multi-filter imaging surveys. We test the potential of these techniques for determining the evolution of these functions up to z ∼ 0.7 in the Javalambre Physics of the Accelerating Universe Astrophysical Survey (J-PAS), which will image thousands of square degrees in the northern hemisphere with an unprecedented photometric system that includes 54 narrow band filters.

Methods. As J-PAS is still an ongoing survey, we used the miniJPAS dataset (a stripe of 1 deg² dictated according to the J-PAS strategy) for determining the LMFs of galaxies at 0.05 ≤ z ≤ 0.7. Stellar mass and B-band luminosity for each of the miniJPAS galaxies are constrained using an updated version of our fitting code for spectral energy distribution, MUlti-Filter FITting (MUFFIT), whose values are based on non-parametric composite stellar population models and the probability distribution functions of the miniJPAS photometric redshifts. Galaxies are classified according to their star formation activity through the stellar mass versus rest-frame colour diagram corrected for extinction (MCDE) and we assign a probability to each source of being a quiescent or star-forming galaxy. Different stellar mass and luminosity completeness limits are set and parametrised as a function of redshift, for setting the limitations of our flux-limited sample (r_SDSS ≤ 22) for the determination of the miniJPAS LMFs. The miniJPAS LMFs are parametrised according to Schechter-like functions via a novel maximum likelihood method accounting for uncertainties, degeneracies, probabilities, completeness, and priors.

Results. Overall, our results point to a smooth evolution with redshift (0.05 ≤ z ≤ 0.7) of the miniJPAS LMFs, which is in agreement with previous studies. The LMF evolution of star-forming galaxies mainly involve the bright and massive ends of these functions, whereas the LMFs of quiescent galaxies also exhibit a non-negligible evolution in their faint and less massive ends. The cosmic evolution of the global B-band luminosity density decreases by ∼0.1 dex from z = 0.7 to 0.05; whereas for quiescent galaxies, this quantity roughly remains constant. In contrast, the stellar mass density increases by ∼0.3 dex in the same redshift range, where the evolution is mainly driven by quiescent galaxies, owing to an overall increase in the number of this type of galaxy. In turn, this covers the majority and most massive galaxies, namely, 60–100% of galaxies at log₁₀(M_⋆/M_⊙)≳10.7.