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Description
Here we provide the most comprehensive determinations of the rest-frame UV luminosity function (LF) available to date with the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) at z~2-9. Essentially all of the noncluster extragalactic legacy fields are utilized, including the Hubble Ultra Deep Field, the Hubble Frontier Fields parallel fields, and all five CANDELS fields, for a total survey area of 1136arcmin^2^. Our determinations include galaxies at z~2-3 leveraging the deep HDUV, UVUDF, and ERS WFC3/UVIS observations available over an ~150arcmin^2^ area in the GOODS-North and GOODS-South regions. All together, our collective samples include >24000 sources, >2.3x larger than previous selections with HST. We identify 5766, 6332, 7240, 3449, 1066, 601, 246, and 33 sources at z~2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9, respectively. Combining our results with an earlier z~10 LF determination by Oesch et al., we quantify the evolution of the UV LF. Our results indicate that there is (1) a smooth flattening of the faint-end slope {alpha} from {alpha}~-2.4 at z~10 to {alpha}~-1.5 at z~2, (2) minimal evolution in the characteristic luminosity M* at z>~2.5, and (3) a monotonic increase in the normalization log_10_\{phi}* from z~10 to 2, which can be well described by a simple second-order polynomial, consistent with an "accelerated" evolution scenario. We find that each of these trends (from z~10 to 2.5 at least) can be readily explained on the basis of the evolution of the halo mass function and a simple constant star formation efficiency model.
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