DAWN survey pre-launch Euclid catalogue

These data are used to gain new insight into the growth of stellar mass across cosmic history by characterising the evolution of the galaxy stellar mass function through 0.2<z<=6.5. The total volume (0.62Gpc^3^) represents an order of magnitude increase compared to previous works that have explored z>3 and significantly reduces cosmic variance, thus yielding strong constraints on the abundance of galaxies above the characteristic stellar mass (M*) across this ten billion year time period.

The evolution of the galaxy stellar mass function is generally consistent with results from the literature but now provide firm estimates of number density where only upper limits were previously available. Contrasting the galaxy stellar mass function with the dark matter halo mass function suggests that massive galaxies (M~>10^11^M_{Sun}_) at z>3.5 required integrated star-formation efficiencies of M/(M_h_*f_b_)~>0.25-0.5, in excess of the commonlyheld view of 'universal peak efficiency' from studies on the stellar-to-halo mass relation.