Evolution of Lyman Break Galaxies From z=5 to 3

Abstract

We report the updated UV luminosity function (LF) of Lyman break galaxies (LBGs) at z~5. Combining with lower redshift data, we found that the evolution of UV LF is differential depending on the UV luminosity; i.e., the number density of luminous LBGs does not change significantly from z=5 to 3, while the number density of faint (L<L*) galaxies increases by a factor of five. We also found the signs of differential evolution within other observational results for LBGs at z~5. UV-luminous objects show strong clustering, and they have weak or no Lyman-alpha emissions while showing prominent metal absorption lines. There is also a clear deficiency of objects with blue UV-optical colors for those bright in rest-frame optical bands (from the Spitzer/IRAC data obtained by the GOODS project). By the SED fitting using rest-frame optical to near-infrared photometry data it is suggested that most luminous objects at z~5 have already accumulated stellar mass more than 10^10 Msun. We discuss that this differential evolution might be understood as a consequence of the biased galaxy evolution.