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The UV Continuum of z > 1 Star-forming Galaxies in the Hubble Ultraviolet UltraDeep Field

We estimate the UV continuum slope, beta, for 923 galaxies in the range 1 < z < 8 in the Hubble Ultradeep Field (HUDF). These data include 460 galaxies at 1 < z < 2 down to an absolute magnitude M_{UV} = -14 (~0.006 L*_{z=1}; 0.02 L*_{z=0}), comparable to dwarf galaxies in the local universe. We combine deep HST/UVIS photometry in F225W, F275W, F336W wavebands (UVUDF) with recent data from HST/WFC3/IR (HUDF12). Galaxies in the range 1 < z < 2 are significantly bluer than local dwarf galaxies. We find their mean (median) values <beta> = -1.382 (-1.830) +/- 0.002 (random) +/- 0.1 (systematic). We find comparable scatter in beta (standard deviation = 0.43) to local dwarf galaxies and 30% larger scatter than z > 2 galaxies. We study the trends of beta with redshift and absolute magnitude for binned sub-samples and find a modest color-magnitude relation, dbeta/dM = -0.11 +/- 0.01 and no evolution in dbeta/dM with redshift. A modest increase in dust reddening with redshift and luminosity, Delta E(B-V) ~ 0.1, and a comparable increase in the dispersion of dust reddening at z < 2, appears likely to explain the observed trends. At z > 2, we find trends that are consistent with previous works; combining our data with the literature in the range 1 < z < 8, we find a color evolution with redshift, dbeta/dz = -0.09 +/-0.01 for low luminosity (0.05 L*_{z=3}), and dbeta/dz = -0.06 +/-0.01 for medium luminosity (0.25 L*_{z=3}) galaxies.