A deep radio view of the evolution of the cosmic star formation rate density from a stellar-mass-selected sample in VLA-COSMOS

We present the 1.4 GHz radio luminosity functions (RLFs) of galaxies in the Cosmic Evolution Survey (COSMOS) field, measured above and below the 5σ detection threshold, using a Bayesian model-fitting technique. The radio flux densities from Very Large Array (VLA)-COSMOS 3-GHz data are extracted at the position of stellar-mass-selected galaxies. We fit a local RLF model, which is a combination of active galactic nuclei and star-forming galaxies (SFGs), in 10 redshift bins with a pure luminosity evolution model. Our RLF exceeds previous determinations at low radio luminosities at z 1.5. We investigate the effects of stellar mass on the total RLF by splitting our sample into low (108.5 ≤ M/M⊙ ≤ 1010) and high (⁠M>1010M⊙⁠) stellar-mass subsets. We find that the SFRD is dominated by sources in the high stellar masses bin, at all redshifts