Cosmic star formation history to z=1 from a narrow emission line-selected tunable-filter survey

We report the results of a deep three-dimensional imaging survey of the Hubble Deep Field North using the Taurus Tunable Filter at the William Herschel Telescope. This survey was designed to search for new line-emitting populations of objects missed by other techniques and to measure the cosmic star formation rate density from a line-selected survey. We observed in three contiguous sequences of narrowband slices in the 7100, 8100, and 9100 8 regions of the spectrum, corresponding to a cosmological volume of up to 1000 Mpc(3) at z = 1, down to a flux limit of similar to 2x 10(-17) ergs cm(-2) s(-1). The survey is deep enough to be highly complete for low line luminosity galaxies. Cross-matching with existing spectroscopy in the field results in a small line-luminosity - limited sample, with very high redshift-identification completeness containing seven [O II], Hbeta, and Halpha emitters over the redshift range 0.3 - 0.9. Treating this as a direct star formation rate - selected sample, we estimate the star formation history of the universe to z = 1. We find no evidence for any new population of line-emitting objects contributing significantly to the cosmological star formation rate density. Rather, from our complete narrowband sample, we find that the star formation history is consistent with earlier estimates from broadband imaging surveys and other less deep line-selected surveys.