Probing the evolution of the near-infrared luminosity function of galaxies to z = 3 in the Hubble Deep Field-South

Abstract

We present the rest-frame J s - and K s -band luminosity function (LF) of a sample of about 300 galaxies selected in the Hubble Deep Field-South (HDF-S) at K s ≤ 23 (Vega). We use calibrated photometric redshift together with spectroscopic redshift for 25 per cent of the sample. The accuracy reached in the photometric redshift estimate is 0.06 (rms) and the fraction of outliers is 1 per cent. We find that the rest-frame J s -band luminosities obtained by extrapolating the observed J s -band photometry are consistent with those obtained by extrapolating the photometry in the redder H and K s bands closer to the rest-frame J s , at least up to z ∼ 2. Moreover, we find no significant differences among the luminosities obtained with different spectral libraries. Thus, our LF estimate is not dependent either on the extrapolation made on the best-fitting template or on the library of models used to fit the photometry. The selected sample has allowed us to probe the evolution of the LF in the three redshift bins [0; 0.8), [0.8; 1.9) and [1.9; 4) centred at the median redshift z m ≃ [0.6, 1.2, 3] and to probe the LF at z m ≃ 0.6 down to the unprecedented faint luminosities M Js ≃ -13 and M Ks ≃ -14. We find hints of a rise of the faint-end (M Js > -17 and M Ks > -18) near-infrared (near-IR) LF at z m ∼ 0.6: a rise that cannot be probed at higher redshift with our sample. The values of a we estimate are consistent with the local value and do not show any trend with redshift. We do not see evidence of evolution from z = 0 to z m ∼ 0.6 suggesting that the population of local bright galaxies was already formed at z 0.8 suggests that a significant fraction of them increase their stellar mass at 1 3. Thus, our results suggest that the assembly of massive galaxies is spread over a large redshift range and that the increase of their stellar mass has been very efficient also at very high redshift at least for a fraction of them.