VUDS UV and Ly{alpha} luminosity functions Virtual Observatory Resource

Authors
  1. Khusanova Y.
  2. Le Fevre O.
  3. Cassata P.
  4. Cucciati O.
  5. Lemaux B.C.,Tasca L.A.M.
  6. Thomas R.
  7. Garilli B.
  8. Le Brun V.
  9. Maccagni D.,Pentericci L.
  10. Zamorani G.
  11. Amorin R.
  12. Bardelli S.
  13. Castellano M.,Cassara L.P.
  14. Cimatti A.
  15. Giavalisco M.
  16. Hathi N.P.
  17. Ilbert O.,Koekemoer A.M.
  18. Marchi F.
  19. Pforr J.
  20. Ribeiro B.
  21. Schaerer D.
  22. Tresse L.,Vergani D.
  23. Zucca E.
  24. Published by
    CDS
Abstract

The star formation rate density (SFRD) evolution presents an area of great interest in the studies of galaxy evolution and reionization. The current constraints of SFRD at z>5 are based on the rest-frame UV luminosity functions with the data from photometric surveys. The VIMOS UltraDeep Survey (VUDS) was designed to observe galaxies at redshifts up to ~6 and opened a window for measuring SFRD at z>5 from a spectroscopic sample with a well-controlled selection function. We establish a robust statistical description of the star-forming galaxy population at the end of cosmic HI reionization (5.0<=z<=6.6) from a large sample of 49 galaxies with spectroscopically confirmed redshifts. We determine the rest-frame UV and Ly{alpha} luminosity functions and use them to calculate SFRD at the median redshift of our sample z=5.6. We selected a sample of galaxies at 5.0<=z_spec_<=6.6 from the VUDS. We cleaned our sample from low redshift interlopers using ancillary photometric data. We identified galaxies with Ly{alpha} either in absorption or in emission, at variance with most spectroscopic samples in the literature where Ly{alpha} emitters (LAE) dominate. We determined luminosity functions using the 1/V_max_ method. The galaxies in this redshift range exhibit a large range in their properties. A fraction of our sample shows strong Ly{alpha} emission, while another fraction shows Ly{alpha} in absorption. UV-continuum slopes vary with luminosity, with a large dispersion. We find that star-forming galaxies at these redshifts are distributed along the main sequence in the stellar mass vs. SFR plane, described with a slope {alpha}=0.85+/-0.05. We report a flat evolution of the specific SFR compared to lower redshift measurements. We find that the UV luminosity function is best reproduced by a double power law, while a fit with a Schechter function is only marginally inferior. The Ly{alpha} luminosity function is best fitted with a Schechter function. We derive a logSFRD_UV_(M_{sun}_/yr/Mpc^3^)=-1.45^+0.06^_-0.08_ and logSFRD_Ly{alpha}_(M_{sun}_/yr/Mpc^3^)=-1.40^+0.07^_-0.08_. The SFRD derived from the Ly{alpha} luminosity function is in excellent agreement with the UV-derived SFRD after correcting for IGM absorption.Conclusions. Our new SFRD measurements at a mean redshift of z=5.6 are ~0.2dex above the mean SFRD reported in Madau & Dickinson (2014ARA&A..52..415M), but in excellent agreement with results from Bouwens et al. (2015ApJ...803...34B). These measurements confirm the steep decline of the SFRD at z>2. The bright end of the Ly{alpha} luminosity function has a high number density, indicating a significant star formation activity concentrated in the brightest LAE at these redshifts. LAE with equivalent width EW>25{AA} contribute to about 75% of the total UV-derived SFRD. While our analysis favors low dust content in 5.0<z<6.6, uncertainties on the dust extinction correction and associated degeneracy in spectral fitting will remain an issue, when estimating the total SFRD until future surveys extending spectroscopy to the NIR rest-frame spectral domain, such as with JWST.

Keywords
  1. galaxies
  2. catalogs
  3. redshifted
  4. ultraviolet-astronomy
Bibliographic source Bibcode
2020A&A...634A..97K
See also HTML
https://cdsarc.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/cat/J/A+A/634/A97
IVOA Identifier IVOID
ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/A+A/634/A97
Document Object Identifer DOI
doi:10.26093/cds/vizier.36340097

Access

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http://vizier.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/VizieR-2?-source=J/A+A/634/A97
https://vizier.iucaa.in/viz-bin/VizieR-2?-source=J/A+A/634/A97
http://vizieridia.saao.ac.za/viz-bin/VizieR-2?-source=J/A+A/634/A97
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History

2020-06-13T10:52:29Z
Resource record created
2020-06-13T10:52:29Z
Created
2020-10-05T08:21:56Z
Updated

Contact

Name
CDS support team
Postal Address
CDS, Observatoire de Strasbourg, 11 rue de l'Universite, F-67000 Strasbourg, France
E-Mail
cds-question@unistra.fr