2009A&A...507..693B

We want to study the IR (>8µm) emission of galaxies selected on the basis of their rest-frame UV light in a very homogeneous way (wavelength and luminosity) from z=0 to z=1. We compare their UV and IR rest-frame emission to study the evolution in dust attenuation with z as well as to check if a UV selection is capable of tracking all star formation. This UV selection will also be compared to a sample of Lyman break galaxies selected at z≃1. We select galaxies in UV (1500-1800Å) rest-frame at z=0, z=0.6-0.8, z=0.8-1.2, and with as Lyman break galaxies at z=0.9-1.3, the samples are compiled to sample the same range of luminosity at any redshift. The UV rest-frame data come from GALEX for z<1 and the U-band of the EIS survey (at z=1). The UV data are combined with the IRAS 60µm observations at z=0 and the Spitzer data at 24µm for z>0 sources. The evolution in the IR and UV luminosities with z is analysed for individual galaxies as well as in terms of luminosity functions. The L_IR/L_UV ratio is used to measure dust attenuation. This ratio does not seem to evolve significantly with z for the bulk of our sample galaxies, but some trends are found for both galaxies with a strong dust attenuation and UV luminous sources: galaxies with L_IR/L_UV>10 are more frequent at z>0 than at z=0, and the largest values of L_IR/L_UV are found for UV faint objects; in contrast, the most luminous galaxies of our samples (L_UV>2x10¹⁰L_☉), detected at z=1, exhibit a lower dust attenuation than fainter ones. The value of L_IR/L_UV increases with the K rest-frame luminosity of the galaxies at all redshifts considered and shows a residual anticorrelation with L_UV. The most massive and UV luminous galaxies exhibit quite high specific star formation rates. Lyman break galaxies exhibit systematically lower dust attenuation than UV-selected galaxies of same luminosity, but similar specific star formation rates. The analysis of the UV+IR luminosity functions leads to the conclusion that up to z=1, most of the star formation activity of UV-selected galaxies is emitted in IR. Although we are able to infer information about all the star formation from our UV selection at z=0.7, at z=1 we miss a large fraction of galaxies more luminous than ≃10¹¹L_☉. The effect is found to be larger for Lyman break galaxies.