The Evolution of ISM Mass Probed by Dust Emission -- ALMA Observations at z = 0.3 to 2

The use of submillimeter dust continuum emission to probe the mass of interstellar dust and gas in galaxies is empirically calibrated using samples of local star-forming galaxies, Planck observations of the Milky Way, and high-redshift submillimeter galaxies. All of these objects suggest a similar calibration, strongly supporting the view that the Rayleigh-Jeans tail of the dust emission can be used as an accurate and very fast probe of the interstellar medium (ISM) in galaxies. We present ALMA Cycle 0 observations of the Band 7 (350 GHz) dust emission in 107 galaxies from z = 0.2 to 2.5. Three samples of galaxies with a total of 101 galaxies were stellar-mass-selected from COSMOS to have M-* similar or equal to 10(11)M(circle dot) : 37 at z similar to 0.4, 33 at z similar to 0.9, and 31 at z = 2. A fourth sample with six infrared-luminous galaxies at z = 2 was observed for comparison with the purely mass-selected samples. From the fluxes detected in the stacked images for each sample, we find that the ISM content has decreased by a factor similar to 6 from1 to 2x10(10)M(circle dot) at both z = 2 and 0.9 down to similar to 2x10(9)M(circle dot) at z = 0.4. The infrared-luminous sample at z = 2 shows a further similar to 4 times increase in M-ISM compared with the equivalent non-infrared-bright sample at the same redshift. The gas mass fractions are similar to 2% +/- 0.5%, 12% +/- 3%, 14% +/- 2%, and 53% +/- 3% for the four subsamples (z = 0.4, 0.9, and 2 and infrared-bright galaxies).