Exploring the High-Mass End of the Stellar Mass Function of Star Forming Galaxies at Cosmic Noon

Abstract

We present the high-mass end of the galaxy stellar mass function using the largest sample to date (5,352) of star-forming galaxies with $M_{\star }>10^{11}{M}_{\odot }$ at cosmic noon, $1.5<z<3.5$. This sample is uniformly selected across 17.2 deg${}^2$ ($\sim$0.44 Gpc${}^3$ comoving volume from $1.5<z<3.5$), mitigating the effects of cosmic variance and encompassing a wide range of environments. This area, a factor of 10 larger than previous studies, provides robust statistics at the high-mass end. Using multi-wavelength data in the Spitzer/HETDEX Exploratory Large Area (SHELA) footprint we find that the SHELA footprint star-forming galaxy stellar mass function is steeply declining at the high-mass end probing values as high as $\sim$$10^{-4}$ Mpc${}^3$/dex and as low as $\sim$5$\times$$10^{-8}$ Mpc${}^3$/dex across a stellar mass range of log($M_{\star }$/$M_{\odot }$) $\sim$ 11 - 12. We compare our empirical star-forming galaxy stellar mass function at the high mass end to three types of numerical models: hydrodynamical models from IllustrisTNG, abundance matching from the UniverseMachine, and three different semi-analytic models (SAMs; SAG, SAGE, GALACTICUS). At redshifts $1.5<z<3.5$ we find that results from IllustrisTNG and abundance matching models agree within a factor of $\sim$2 to 10, however the three SAMs strongly underestimate (up to a factor of 1,000) the number density of massive galaxies. We discuss the implications of these results for our understanding of galaxy evolution.

19 pages, 10 figures, Accepted for publication in MNRAS

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