Evolution of the galaxy stellar mass function: evidence for an increasing $M^{\ast }$ from $z=2$ to the present day

Abstract

Utilising optical and near-infrared broadband photometry covering $>5{\mathrm{deg}}^2$ in two of the most well-studied extragalactic legacy fields (COSMOS and XMM-LSS), we measure the galaxy stellar mass function (GSMF) between $0.1<z<2.0$. We explore in detail the effect of two source extraction methods (SExtractor and ProFound) in addition to the inclusion/exclusion of Spitzer IRAC 3.6 and 4.5$\mu$m photometry when measuring the GSMF. We find that including IRAC data reduces the number of massive (${\log }_{10}(M/M_{\odot })>11.25$) galaxies found due to improved photometric redshift accuracy, but has little effect on the more numerous lower-mass galaxies. We fit the resultant GSMFs with double Schechter functions down to ${\log }_{10}(M/M_{\odot })$ = 7.75 (9.75) at z = 0.1 (2.0) and find that the choice of source extraction software has no significant effect on the derived best-fit parameters. However, the choice of methodology used to correct for the Eddington bias has a larger impact on the high-mass end of the GSMF, which can partly explain the spread in derived $M^{\ast }$ values from previous studies. Using an empirical correction to model the intrinsic GSMF, we find evidence for an evolving characteristic stellar mass with $\delta {\log }_{10}(M^{\ast }/M_{\odot })/\delta z$ = $-0.16\pm 0.05(-0.11\pm 0.05)$, when using SExtractor (ProFound). We argue that with widely quenched star formation rates in massive galaxies at low redshift ($z<0.5$), additional growth via mergers is required in order to sustain such an evolution to a higher characteristic mass.

19 pages, 7 figures, 8 tables, submitted to MNRAS. Updated to accepted version from journal

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