The Rest‐Frame Optical Luminosity Density, Color, and Stellar Mass Density of the Universe fromz= 0 toz= 3

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Abstract
We present the evolution of the rest-frame optical luminosity density j(lambda)(rest), the integrated rest-frame optical color, and the stellar mass density, rho(*), for a sample of K-s band-selected galaxies in the Hubble Deep Field South (HDF-S). We derived j(lambda)(rest) in the rest-frame U, B, and V bands and found that j(lambda)(rest) increases by a factor of 1.9 +/- 0.4, 2.9 +/- 0.6, and 4.9 +/- 1.0 in the V, B, and U rest-frame bands, respectively, between redshifts of 0.1 and 3.2. We derived the luminosity-weighted mean cosmic (U-B)(rest) and (B-V)(rest) colors as a function of redshift. The colors bluen almost monotonically with increasing redshift; at z = 0.1, the (U-B)(rest) and (B-V)(rest) colors are 0.16 and 0.75, respectively, while at z = 2.8 they are -0.39 and 0.29, respectively. We derived the luminosity-weighted mean M/L*(V), using the correlation between (U-V) rest and log M/L*(V) that exists for a range in smooth star formation histories (SFHs) and moderate extinctions. We have shown that the mean of individual M/L*(V) estimates can overpredict the true value by similar to70%, while our method overpredicts the true value by only similar to35%. We find that the universe at z similar to 3 had similar to10 times lower stellar mass density than it does today in galaxies with L-V(rest) > 1.4 x 10(10) h(70)(-2) L-circle dot. Half of the stellar mass of the universe was formed by z similar to 1-1.5. The rate of increase in rho(*) with decreasing redshift is similar to but above that for independent estimates from the HDF-N, but it is slightly less than that predicted by the integral of the SFR(z) curve.

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