The evolution of the rest-frame J- and H-band luminosity function of galaxies to z=3.5

We present the rest-frame J- and H-band luminosity function (LF) of field galaxies, based on a deep multiwavelength composite sample from the Multiwavelength Survey by Yale-Chile, Faint Infrared Extragalactic Survey and GOODS Chandra Deep Field-South survey public catalogues, covering a total area of 450 arcmin(2). The availability of flux measurements in the Spitzer Infrared Array Camera 3.6, 4.5, 5.8 and 8 mu m channels allows us to compute absolute magnitudes in the rest-frame J and H bands up to z = 3.5 minimizing the dependence on the stellar evolution models. We compute the LF in the four redshift bins: 1.5 < z < 2.0; 2.0 < z < 2.5; 2.5 < z < 3.0 and 3.0 < z < 3.5. Combining our results with those already available at lower redshifts, we find that (1) the faint-end slope is consistent with being constant up to z = 3.5, with alpha = -1.05 +/- 0.03 for the rest-frame J band and alpha = -1.15 +/- 0.02 for the rest-frame H band; (2) the normalization phi* decreases by a factor of 4-6 between z = 0 and z similar or equal to 1.75 and by a factor of 2-3 between z similar or equal to 1.75 and z = 3.25; (3) the characteristic magnitude M* shows a brightening from z = 0 to z similar or equal to 2 followed by a slow dimming to z = 3.25. We finally compute the luminosity density (LD) in both rest-frame J and H bands. The analysis of our results together with those available in the literature shows that the LD is approximately constant up to z approximate to 1, and it then decreases by a factor of 6 up to z = 3.5.