Down‐sizing in galaxy formation at z ∼ 1 in the Subaru/ XMM–Newton Deep Survey (SXDS)

We use the deep wide‐field optical imaging data of the Subaru/ XMM–Newton Deep Survey to discuss the luminosity‐ (mass‐)dependent galaxy colours down to z ′= 25.0 (5 × 10 9 h −2 70 M ⊙ ) for z ∼ 1 galaxies in colour‐selected high‐density regions. We find an apparent absence of galaxies on the red colour–magnitude sequence below z ′∼ 24.2 , corresponding to ∼ M *+ 2 (∼ 10 10 M ⊙ ) with respect to passively evolving galaxies at z ∼ 1 . Galaxies brighter than M *− 0.5 (8 × 10 10 M ⊙ ) , however, are predominantly red passively evolving systems, with few blue star‐forming galaxies at these magnitudes. This apparent age gradient, where massive galaxies are dominated by old stellar populations while less massive galaxies have more extended star formation histories, supports the ‘down‐sizing’ idea where the mass of galaxies hosting star formation decreases as the Universe ages. Combined with the lack of evolution in the shape of the stellar mass function for massive galaxies since at least z ∼ 1 , it appears that galaxy formation processes (both star formation and mass assembly) should have occurred in an accelerated way in massive systems in high‐density regions, while these processes should have been slower in smaller systems. This result provides an interesting challenge for modern cold dark matter based galaxy formation theories which predict later formation epochs of massive systems, commonly referred to as ‘bottom‐up’.