Being able to reproduce the properties of massive galaxies in the early universe is one of the greatest challenges to both semi-analytic models and hydrodynamic simulations of galaxy formation. Recent…

This is a $344,147 grant awarded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to the Regents of the University of California at Riverside (UC Riverside) on January 1, 2018. The grant is for research to create multi-passband ground-based optical through Herschel photometric catalogs in five 18 square degree Spitzer SERVS fields. The goal is to identify the largest possible sample of stellar-mass selected massive galaxies at redshifts of 3 or greater, as current surveys have been limited in volume and missed the rarest, most massive galaxies in the early universe. This research aims to further understanding of the mechanisms driving stellar mass growth at different redshifts and environments. The grant does not have a set-aside designation and is set to be completed by December 31, 2021.

Being able to reproduce the properties of massive galaxies in the early universe is one of the greatest challenges to both semi-analytic models and hydrodynamic simulations of galaxy formation. Recent observations utilizing stellar-mass-selected samples (e.g., newfirm medium-band survey, ultravista) suggest that, at high redshift, UV-selected samples of lyman-break galaxies (lbgs) are missing sizeable numbers of the most massive galaxies. Because even the largest deep near-IR field galaxy surveys carried out so far have covered at most a few degrees, they have only sampled relatively small volumes of the universe. This means that they are not well suited to discovering the rarest, most massive (m>10^11 msun) galaxies in large numbers, especially at high redshift. At the present time we still lack statistically significant samples of high redshift, massive galaxies, a necessary first step in understanding the mechanism(s) which dominate stellar mass growth at different redshifts and in different environments. Here, we propose to create multi-passband ground-based-optical-through-herschel photometric catalogs in the five 18 DEG^2 spitzer servs fields with the primary science goal of identifying the largest possible sample of stellar-mass selected massive galaxies at 210^11 msun galaxies at 3