A Direct Measurement of the High-Mass End of the Velocity Dispersion Function at $z\sim 0.55$ from SDSS-III/BOSS

Abstract

We report the first direct spectroscopic measurement of the velocity dispersion function (VDF) for the high-mass red sequence (RS) galaxy population at redshift $z\sim 0.55$. We achieve high precision by using a sample of 600,000 massive galaxies with spectra from the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) of the third Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-III), covering stellar masses $M_{\ast }\gtrsim 10^{11}{M}_{\odot }$. We determine the VDF by projecting the joint probability-density function (PDF) of luminosity $L$ and velocity dispersion $\sigma$, i.e. $p(L,\sigma )$, defined by our previous measurements of the RS luminosity function and $L-\sigma$ relation for this sample. These measurements were corrected from red--blue galaxy population confusion, photometric blurring, incompleteness and selection effects within a forward-modeling framework that furthermore correctly accommodates the low spectroscopic signal-to-noise ratio of individual BOSS spectra. Our $z\sim 0.55$ RS VDF is in overall agreement with the $z\sim 0$ early-type galaxy (ETG) VDF at ${\log }_{10}\sigma \gtrsim 2.47$, however the number density of $z=0.55$ RS galaxies that we report is larger than that of $z=0$ ETG galaxies at $2.35\gtrsim {\log }_{10}\sigma \gtrsim 2.47$. The extrapolation of an intermediate-mass L-$\sigma$ relation towards the high-mass end in previous low-z works may be responsible for this disagreement. Evolutionary interpretation of this comparison is also subject to differences in the way the respective samples are selected; these differences can be mitigated in future work by analyzing $z=0$ SDSS data using the same framework presented in this paper. We also provide the sample PDF for the RS population (i.e. uncorrected for incompleteness), which is a key ingredient for gravitational lensing analyses using BOSS.

14 pages, 8 figures. Published in MNRAS

References in corpus (9)

• The 2.5 m Telescope of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
• PRIMUS: Constraints on Star Formation Quenching and Galaxy Merging, and the Evolution of the Stellar Mass Function From z=0-1
• Curvature in the scaling relations of early-type galaxies
• The 2dF-SDSS LRG and QSO survey: Evolution of the Luminosity Function of Luminous Red Galaxies to z=0.6
• The Weak Lensing Signal and the Clustering of BOSS Galaxies II: Astrophysical and Cosmological Constraints
• Luminosity Function Constraints on the Evolution of Massive Red Galaxies Since z~0.9
• Nucleosynthesis in a Primordial Supernova: Carbon and Oxygen Abundances in SMSS J031300.36-670839.31
• The BOSS Emission-Line Lens Survey. III. : Strong Lensing of Ly$\alpha$ Emitters by Individual Galaxies
• Redshift evolution of the dynamical properties of massive galaxies from SDSS-III/BOSS

Cited by in corpus (14)

• Gravitational lensing of gravitational waves: A statistical perspective
• Magnified or multiply imaged? - Search strategies for gravitationally lensed supernovae in wide-field surveys
• The manifestation of secondary halo bias on the galaxy population from IllustrisTNG300
• The velocity dispersion function of early-type galaxies and its redshift evolution: the newest results from lens redshift test
• The Velocity Dispersion Function for Quiescent Galaxies in the Local Universe
• The Velocity Dispersion Function for Quiescent Galaxies in Nine Strong-Lensing Clusters
• The Velocity Dispersion Function for Massive Quiescent and Star-Forming Galaxies at 0.6 $<$ z $\le$ 1.0
• A semi-analytical perspective on massive galaxies at $z\sim 0.55$
• The mass-size relation of LRGs from BOSS and DECaLS
• Velocity dispersion function evolution from strong lensing statistics
• Velocity dispersion functions of pressure-supported galaxies in EAGLE simulations with varying active galactic nucleus feedback
• Precision Joint Constraints on Cosmology and Gravity Using Strongly Lensed Gravitational Wave Populations
• A semi-analytical perspective on massive red galaxies: I. Assembly history, environment & redshift evolution
• Caustic area biases and how to deal with them