The Munich Near--Infrared Cluster Survey (MUNICS) -- VI. The stellar masses of K-band selected field galaxies to z ~ 1.2

Abstract

We present a measurement of the evolution of the stellar mass function in four redshift bins at 0.4 < z < 1.2 using a sample of more than 5000 K-selected galaxies drawn from the MUNICS dataset. Our data cover the stellar mass range 10^10 < M/Msun < 10^12. We derive K-band mass-to-light ratios by fitting a grid of composite stellar population models of varying star formation history, age, and dust extinction to BVRIJK photometry. We discuss the evolution of the average mass-to-light ratio as a function of galaxy stellar mass in the K-band and in the B-band. We compare our stellar mass function at z > 0 to estimates obtained similarly at z=0. We find that the mass-to-light ratios in the K-band decline with redshift. This decline is similar for all stellar masses above $10^{1}0Msun.Lowermassgalaxieshavelowermass-to-lightratiosatallredshifts.Thestellarmassfunctionevolvessignificantlytoz=\mathrm{1.2.}Thetotalnormalizationdecreasesbyafactorof2,thecharacteristicmass(theknee)shiftstowardslowermassesandthebrightendthereforesteepenswithredshift.Theamountofnumberdensityevolutionisastrongfunctionofstellarmass,withmoremassivesystemsshowingfasterevolutionthanlessmassivesystems.Wediscussthetotalstellarmassdensityoftheuniverseandcompareourresultstothevaluesfromtheliteraturebothatlowerandhigherredshift.Wefindthatthestellarmassdensityatz1isroughly50$z \sim 1$. Our data favor a scenario in which the growth of the most massive galaxies is dominated by accretion and merging rather than star formation which plays a larger role in the growth of less massive systems.

Accepted for publication in ApJ, issues of style and typos corrected to match printed version (proofs)

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