The Evolution of the Stellar Mass Functions of Star-Forming and Quiescent Galaxies to z = 4 from the COSMOS/UltraVISTA Survey

TL;DR

This study measures the stellar mass functions of star-forming and quiescent galaxies up to redshift 4, revealing their growth patterns and the evolution of stellar mass density over cosmic time using the COSMOS/UltraVISTA survey.

Contribution

It provides the first comprehensive measurement of SMFs for both galaxy types up to z=4 with a large, deep sample, and analyzes galaxy mass growth and systematic uncertainties.

Findings

Stellar mass density was only 1-50% of current value at z=3.5-0.75.

Quiescent galaxies' mass density increased by 2.71 dex since z=3.5.

Star-forming galaxies dominate SMF at z>2.5, but quiescent galaxies grow significantly.

Abstract

We present measurements of the stellar mass functions (SMFs) of star-forming and quiescent galaxies to z = 4 using a sample of 95 675 galaxies in the COSMOS/UltraVISTA field. Sources have been selected from the DR1 UltraVISTA K_{s}-band imaging which covers a unique combination of a wide area (1.62 deg^2), to a significant depth (K_{s,tot} = 23.4). The SMFs of the combined population are in good agreement with previous measurements and show that the stellar mass density of the universe was only 50%, 10% and 1% of its current value at z ~ 0.75, 2.0, and 3.5, respectively. The quiescent population drives most of the overall growth, with the stellar mass density of these galaxies increasing by 2.71^{+0.93}_{-0.22} dex since z = 3.5. At z > 2.5, star-forming galaxies dominate the total SMF at all stellar masses, although a nonzero population of quiescent galaxies persists to z = 4. Comparisons of the K_{s}-selected star-forming galaxy SMFs to UV-selected SMFs at 2.5 < z < 4 show reasonable agreement and suggests UV-selected samples are representative of the majority of the stellar mass density at z > 3.5. We estimate the average mass growth of individual galaxies by selecting galaxies at fixed cumulative number density. The average galaxy with Log(M_{*}/M_{sun}) = 11.5 at z = 0.3 has grown in mass by only 0.2 dex (0.3 dex) since z = 2.0(3.5), whereas those with Log(M_{*}/M_{sun}) = 10.5 have grown by > 1.0 dex since z = 2. At z < 2, the time derivatives of the mass growth are always larger for lower-mass galaxies, which demonstrates that the mass growth in galaxies since that redshift is mass-dependent and primarily bottom-up. Lastly, we examine potential sources of systematic uncertainties on the SMFs and find that those from photo-z templates, SPS modeling, and the definition of quiescent galaxies dominate the total error budget in the SMFs.