The Morphological Evolution of Field Galaxies

Abstract

I review two observational programs which, together, promise to unravel the detailed astrophysical evolution of normal field galaxies over the last 5-7 Gyr. Systematic ground-based spectroscopy of faint galaxies have revealed an increasing faint end slope for the luminosity function with redshift. The trend is strongest for galaxies undergoing intense star-formation. Deep images taken with the repaired HST can be used to count galaxies as a function of morphological type. Regular `Hubble sequence' galaxies follow the no-evolution prediction, but irregular/peculiar sources have a steeper count slope and provide the excess population. Although the overlap between the spectral and HST samples is currently small, plans to merge similar datasets should reveal the physical explanation for the demise of star formation in faint blue galaxies since $z\simeq$0.5-1.