The 0.1<z<1.65 evolution of the bright end of the [OII] luminosity function

TL;DR

This paper measures the evolution of the [OII] luminosity function from redshift 0.1 to 1.65 using deep spectroscopic data, providing insights for future galaxy surveys and validating semi-analytical models.

Contribution

It introduces a novel method to combine multiple surveys for accurate [OII] luminosity function measurement over a wide redshift range.

Findings

The bright end of the luminosity function decreases from redshift 1.44 to 0.165.

The faint end slope flattens as redshift decreases.

The results agree with previous estimates and semi-analytical models.

Abstract

We present the [OII] luminosity function measured in the redshift range 0.1<z<1.65 with unprecedented depth and accuracy. Our measurements are based on medium resolution flux-calibrated spectra of emission line galaxies with the FORS2 instrument at VLT and with the SDSS-III/BOSS spectrograph. The FORS2 spectra and the corresponding catalog containing redshifts and line fluxes are released along with this paper. In this work we use a novel method to combine the aforementioned surveys with GAMA, zCOSMOS and VVDS, which have different target selection, producing a consistent weighting scheme to derive the [OII] luminosity function. The measured luminosity function is in good agreement with previous independent estimates. The comparison with two state-of-the-art semi-analytical models is good, which is encouraging for the production of mock catalogs of [OII] flux limited surveys. We observe the bright end evolution over 8.5 Gyr: we measure the decrease of log L* from 42.4 erg/s at redshift 1.44 to 41.2 at redshift 0.165 and we find that the faint end slope flattens when redshift decreases. This measurement confirms the feasibility of the target selection of future baryonic acoustic oscillation surveys aiming at observing [OII] flux limited samples.