Exploring the High-Mass End of the Stellar Mass Function of Star Forming Galaxies at Cosmic Noon

Autor: Sherman, Sydney, Jogee, Shardha, Florez, Jonathan, Stevans, Matthew L., Kawinwanichakij, Lalitwadee, Wold, Isak, Finkelstein, Steven L., Papovich, Casey, Acquaviva, Viviana, Ciardullo, Robin, Gronwall, Carly, Escalante, Zacharias
Rok vydání: 2019
Předmět:
Druh dokumentu: Working Paper
DOI: 10.1093/mnras/stz3229
Popis: We present the high-mass end of the galaxy stellar mass function using the largest sample to date (5,352) of star-forming galaxies with $M_{\star} > 10^{11} M_{\odot}$ at cosmic noon, $1.5 < z < 3.5$. This sample is uniformly selected across 17.2 deg$^2$ ($\sim$0.44 Gpc$^3$ comoving volume from $1.5 < z < 3.5$), mitigating the effects of cosmic variance and encompassing a wide range of environments. This area, a factor of 10 larger than previous studies, provides robust statistics at the high-mass end. Using multi-wavelength data in the Spitzer/HETDEX Exploratory Large Area (SHELA) footprint we find that the SHELA footprint star-forming galaxy stellar mass function is steeply declining at the high-mass end probing values as high as $\sim$$10^{-4}$ Mpc$^3$/dex and as low as $\sim$5$\times$$10^{-8}$ Mpc$^3$/dex across a stellar mass range of log($M_\star$/$M_\odot$) $\sim$ 11 - 12. We compare our empirical star-forming galaxy stellar mass function at the high mass end to three types of numerical models: hydrodynamical models from IllustrisTNG, abundance matching from the UniverseMachine, and three different semi-analytic models (SAMs; SAG, SAGE, GALACTICUS). At redshifts $1.5 < z < 3.5$ we find that results from IllustrisTNG and abundance matching models agree within a factor of $\sim$2 to 10, however the three SAMs strongly underestimate (up to a factor of 1,000) the number density of massive galaxies. We discuss the implications of these results for our understanding of galaxy evolution.
Comment: 19 pages, 10 figures, Accepted for publication in MNRAS
Databáze: arXiv
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