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Published September 1, 2006 | Published
Journal Article Open

The Bright Ages Survey. II. Evolution of Luminosity, Dust Extinction, and Star Formation from z = 0.5 to z = 2.5

Abstract

The Bright Ages Survey is a K-band-selected redshift survey over six separate fields with UBVRIzJHK imaging covering a total of 75.6 arcmin(2) and reaching K = 20-20.5. Two fields have deep HST imaging, while all are centered on possible overdensities in the z similar to 2 range. Here we report photometric redshifts and spectroscopy for this sample, which has been described in Paper I. We find 18 galaxies with spectroscopic redshifts of z > 1:5. The derived rest-frame R-band luminosity functions show strong evolution out to z = 2. The luminosity function at z = 2 shows more bright galaxies than at any other epoch, even the extrapolated z = 3 luminosity function from Shapley et al. However, the R-band integrated luminosity density remains roughly constant from to z = 0:5 to z = 2. Evolved galaxies (E, S0, Sa) show a decreasing contribution to the total R-band luminosity density with redshift. The dust extinction in our K-selected sample is moderately larger [median z = 2 E(B - V) 0:30] than that found in Lyman break galaxies, although not enough to make a significant impact on the total light or star formation found at high redshift. We measure the extinction-corrected star formation rate density at z 2, finding ρ_(SFR)(z = 1.5-2.5)= 0.093 M_⊙ yr^(-1) Mpc^(-3), consistent with a relatively flat instantaneous star formation rate from z = 1-4.

Additional Information

© 2006 The American Astronomical Society. Received 2005 October 14; accepted 2006 May 8. The data presented herein were obtained at the W. M. Keck Observatory, which is operated as a scientific partnership among the California Institute of Technology, the University of California and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The Observatory was made possible by the generous financial support of the W. M. Keck Foundation. We thank the anonymous referee for their invaluable comments that improved this paper immensely. The authors would like to acknowledge the assistance of Rick Edelson, Andrew Fruchter, William Keel, Anuradha Koratkar, Jason Marshall, Roser Pello, Alice Shapley, Harry Teplitz, and Roger Windhorst, who all contributed some of their precious time to help with this work. We wish to thank the staff of the Keck observatories for their valuable help, particularly Paola Amico and all her aid with LRIS. Similarly, we must thank Micol Bolzonella, Joan-Marc Miralles, and Roser Pello for producing and publicly releasing their Hyperz photometric redshift code. The authors wish to recognize and acknowledge the very significant cultural role and reverence that the summit of Mauna Kea has always had within the indigenous Hawaiian community. We are most fortunate to have the opportunity to conduct observations from this mountain. Finally, the authors would like to acknowledge financial support from a grant for HST program AR-9543.

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August 19, 2023
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