GAMA/G10-COSMOS/3D-HST: The 0<z<5 cosmic star-formation history, stellar- and dust-mass densities

Simon P. Driver, Stephen K. Andrews, Elisabete da Cunha, Luke J. Davies, Claudia Lagos, Aaron S. G. Robotham, Kevin Vinsen, Angus H. Wright, Mehmet Alpaslan, Joss Bland-Hawthorn, Nathan Bourne, Sarah Brough, Malcolm N. Bremer, Michelle Cluver, Matthew Colless, Christopher J. Conselice, Loretta Dunne, Steve A. Eales, Haley Gomez, Benne Holwerda, Andrew M. Hopkins, Prajwal R. Kafle, Lee S. Kelvin, Jon Loveday, Jochen Liske, Steve J. Maddox, Steven Phillipps, Kevin Pimbblet, Kate Rowlands, Anne E. Sansom, Edward Taylor, Lingyu Wang, Stephen M. Wilkins

Published 2017-10-18Version 1

We use the energy-balance code MAGPHYS to determine stellar and dust masses, and dust corrected star-formation rates for over 200,000 GAMA galaxies, 170,000 G10-COSMOS galaxies and 200,000 3D-HST galaxies. Our values agree well with previously reported measurements and constitute a representative and homogeneous dataset spanning a broad range in stellar mass (10^8---10^12 Msol), dust mass (10^6---10^9 Msol), and star-formation rates (0.01---100 Msol per yr), and over a broad redshift range (0.0 < z < 5.0). We combine these data to measure the cosmic star-formation history (CSFH), the stellar-mass density (SMD), and the dust-mass density (DMD) over a 12 Gyr timeline. The data mostly agree with previous estimates, where they exist, and provide a quasi-homogeneous dataset using consistent mass and star-formation estimators with consistent underlying assumptions over the full time range. As a consequence our formal errors are significantly reduced when compared to the historic literature. Integrating our cosmic star-formation history we precisely reproduce the stellar-mass density with an ISM replenishment factor of 0.50 +/- 0.07, consistent with our choice of Chabrier IMF plus some modest amount of stripped stellar mass. Exploring the cosmic dust density evolution, we find a gradual increase in dust density with lookback time. We build a simple phenomenological model from the CSFH to account for the dust mass evolution, and infer two key conclusions: (1) For every unit of stellar mass which is formed 0.0065---0.004 units of dust mass is also formed; (2) Over the history of the Universe approximately 90 to 95 per cent of all dust formed has been destroyed and/or ejected.