2013MNRAS.429..881S

We present the rest-frame J- and H-band luminosity function (LF) of field galaxies, based on a deep multiwavelength composite sample from the Multiwavelength Survey by Yale-Chile, Faint Infrared Extragalactic Survey and GOODS Chandra Deep Field-South survey public catalogues, covering a total area of 450 arcmin2. The availability of flux measurements in the Spitzer Infrared Array Camera 3.6, 4.5, 5.8 and 8µm channels allows us to compute absolute magnitudes in the rest-frame J and H bands up to z = 3.5 minimizing the dependence on the stellar evolution models. We compute the LF in the four redshift bins: 1.5 < z < 2.0; 2.0 < z < 2.5; 2.5 < z < 3.0 and 3.0 < z < 3.5. Combining our results with those already available at lower redshifts, we find that (1) the faint-end slope is consistent with being constant up to z = 3.5, with α = -1.05±0.03 for the rest-frame J band and α = -1.15 ± 0.02 for the rest-frame H band; (2) the normalization φ* decreases by a factor of 4-6 between z = 0 and z ≃ 1.75 and by a factor of 2-3 between z ≃ 1.75 and z = 3.25; (3) the characteristic magnitude M* shows a brightening from z = 0 to z ≃ 2 followed by a slow dimming to z = 3.25. We finally compute the luminosity density (LD) in both rest-frame J and H bands. The analysis of our results together with those available in the literature shows that the LD is approximately constant up to z ~ 1, and it then decreases by a factor of 6 up to z = 3.5.