THE EVOLUTION OF THE GALAXY STELLAR MASS FUNCTION AT z=4-8: A STEEPENING LOW-MASS-END SLOPE WITH INCREASING REDSHIFT

We present galaxy stellar mass functions (GSMFs) at z = 4-8 from a rest-frame ultraviolet (UV) selected sample of similar to 4500 galaxies, found via photometric redshifts over an area of similar to 280 arcmin(2) in the Cosmic Assembly Near-infrared Deep Extragalactic Legacy Survey (CANDELS)/Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey (GOODS) fields and the Hubble Ultra Deep Field. The deepest Spitzer/IRAC data to date and the relatively large volume allow us to place a better constraint at both the low- and high-mass ends of the GSMFs compared to previous space-based studies from pre-CANDELS observations. Supplemented by a stacking analysis, we find a linear correlation between the rest-frame UV absolute magnitude at 1500 angstrom (M-UV) and logarithmic stellar mass (log M-*) that holds for galaxies with log(M-*/M-circle dot) less than or similar to 10. We use simulations to validate our method of measuring the slope of the log M-*-M-UV relation, finding that the bias is minimized with a hybrid technique combining photometry of individual bright galaxies with stacked photometry for faint galaxies. The resultant measured slopes do not significantly evolve over z = 4-8, while the normalization of the trend exhibits a weak evolution toward lower masses at higher redshift. We combine the log M-*-M-UV distribution with observed rest-frame UV luminosity functions at each redshift to derive the GSMFs, finding that the low-mass-end slope becomes steeper with increasing redshift from alpha = -1.55(-0.07)(+0.08) at z = 4 to alpha = -2.25(-0.35)(+0.72) at z = 8. The inferred stellar mass density, when integrated over M-* = 10(8)-10(13) M-circle dot, increases by a factor of 10(-2)(+30) between z = 7 and z = 4 and is in good agreement with the time integral of the cosmic star formation rate density.