The Arecibo Ultra-Deep Survey

The Arecibo Ultra-Deep Survey (AUDS) is a blind H I survey aimed at detecting galaxies beyond the local Universe in the 21-cm emission line of neutral hydrogen (H I). The Arecibo L-band Feed Array (ALFA) was used to image an area of 1.35 deg(2) to a redshift depth of 0.16, using a total on-source integration time of over 700 h. The long integration time and small observation area makes it one of the most sensitive H I surveys, with a noise level of similar to 75 mu Jy per 21.4 kHz (equivalent to 4.5 km s(-1) at redshift z = 0). We detect 247 galaxies in the survey, more than doubling the number already detected in AUDS60. The mass range of detected galaxies is log(M-H I [h(70)(-2) M-circle dot]) = 6.32-10.76. A modified maximum likelihood method is employed to construct an HI mass function (HIMF). The best fitting Schechter parameters are low-mass slope alpha = -1.37 +/- 0.05, characteristic mass log(M* [h(70)(-2) M-circle dot]) = 10.15 +/- 0.09, and density Phi(*) = (2.41 +/- 0.57) x 10(-3)h(70)(3) Mpc(-3) dex(-1). The sample was divided into low-and high-redshift bins to investigate the evolution of the HIMF. No change in low-mass slope alpha was measured, but an increased characteristic mass M*, was noted in the higher redshift sample. Using Sloan Digital Sky Survey data to define relative galaxy number density, the dependence of the HIMF with environment was also investigated in the two AUDS regions. We find no significant variation in alpha or M*. In the surveyed region, we measured a cosmic H I density Omega(H I) = (3.55 +/- 0.30) x 10(-4)h(70)(-1) . There appears to be no evolutionary trend in Omega(H I) above 2 sigma significance between redshifts of 0 and 0.16.