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Published January 1, 2009 | Published
Journal Article Open

The Dust-Unbiased Cosmic Star-Formation History from the 20 CM VLA-COSMOS Survey

Abstract

We derive the cosmic star-formation history out to z = 1.3 using a sample of ~350 radio-selected star-forming (SF) galaxies, a far larger sample than those in previous, similar studies. We attempt to differentiate between radio emission from active galactic nuclei and SF galaxies, and determine an evolving 1.4 GHz luminosity function (LF) based on these VLA-COSMOS SF galaxies. We precisely measure the high-luminosity end of the SF galaxy LF (star-formation rate ≳100 M☉yr^–1; equivalent to ultra-luminous IR galaxies) out to z = 1.3, finding a somewhat slower evolution than that previously derived from mid-infrared data. We find that more stars are forming in luminous starbursts at high redshift. We use extrapolations based on the local radio galaxy LF; assuming pure luminosity evolution, we derive L* ∝ (1 + z)^2.1±0.2 or L* ∝ (1 + z)^2.5±0.1, depending on the choice of the local radio galaxy LF. Thus, our radio-derived results independently confirm the ~1 order of magnitude decline in the CSFH since z ~ 1.

Additional Information

© 2009 The American Astronomical Society. Received 2008 April 24, accepted for publication 2008 August 25. Published 2008 December 1. Print publication: Issue 1 (2009 January 1) C.C. acknowledges support from the Max-Planck Society and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation through the Max-Planck-Forschungspreis 2005. G.Z. acknowledges support from two contracts PRIN-INAF 2005 and 2007. T.P. acknowledges support from PSC-CUNY grant # 69612-00 38. Based on observations with the National Radio Astronomy Observatory which is a facility of the National Science Foundation operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc. [V.S was a] Fellow of the International Max Planck Research School for Astronomy and Cosmic Physics.

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August 22, 2023
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