The Evolution of Luminous Compact Blue Galaxies in the COSMOS Field

Luminous Compact Blue Galaxies (LCBGs) are a class of compact star forming galaxies that are common at z=1 and rare in the local universe. The rapid increase in LCBG number density between z=0.0-1.0 roughly follows the increase in the star formation rate density of the universe over the same redshift range. We present the first study of the evolution of the number density LCBGs using a single data set covering redshifts from z=0.0-1.0. We do this by generating the luminosity function of LCBGs using a reanalysis of COSMOS photometry and spectroscopic redshift information generated by the Galaxy and Mass Assembly team. We find that M* increases by ~0.7 mag, φ* increases by a factor of 6, and the number density of LCBGs increases by a factor of ~10 between z=0.0-10 roughly matching previous studies using small samples over narrow redshift ranges. We find that LCBGs make up ~62% of galaxies brighter than MB=-18.5 at z=0.9 and only ~10% at z=0.1.