Studying the Evolution of Multi-wavelength Emissivities with the Vimos Vlt Deep Survey

Galaxy redshift surveys are outstanding tools for observational cosmology because they produce large sample of standard galaxies at different cosmic epochs. Redshift acquisition has undergome tremendous progress thanks to advances in technology, and redshift surveys appear nowdays as routine. Even though they may look simple at face-value, the strategy of a survey and the galaxy-selection criteria have crucial impacts on the interpretation of results. Since galaxies are directly observable point-like tracers of dark matter halos, they represent only the tip of the iceberg of what drives the evolution of the Universe. Hence interpretation of these surveys via model-dependent approches provide fundamental insights into galaxy evolution and formation. The construction of various distribution functions in different redshift bins leads to the description of the galaxy populations through cosmic time. In this process a key-point is to define and quantify the completeness of sources so we can compare galaxy samples both at different redshift bins within a single survey, and with other observed or simulated surveys (see discussions in Tresse, 1999). The luminosity function, φ(L), that is the distribution of the comoving number density of galaxies as a function of their intrinsic luminosity, is a fundamental measurement to quantify the evolution of the galaxy populations. Moreover, integrated quantities such as the luminosity density, ∫ φ(L)LdL, are little dependent on the individual evolutionnary histories, and are solid links to the underlying processus of galaxy evolution and formation, such as the