Introducing the Photometric Maximum Likelihood Method: Galaxy Luminosity Functions at z<1.2 in MUSYC-ECDFS

Abstract

We present a new maximum likelihood method for the calculation of galaxy luminosity functions from multi-band photometric surveys without spectroscopic data. The method evaluates the likelihood of a trial luminosity function by directly comparing the predicted distribution of fluxes in a multi-dimensional photometric space to the observations, and thus does not require the intermediate step of calculating photometric redshifts. We apply this algorithm to ~27,000 galaxies with m_R<=25 in the MUSYC-ECDFS field, with a focus on recovering the luminosity function of field galaxies at z<1.2. Our deepest LFs reach M_r=-14 and show that the field galaxy LF deviates from a Schechter function, exhibiting a steep upturn at intermediate magnitudes that is due to galaxies of late spectral types.

24 pages, 11 figures, accepted for publication by MNRAS

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Cited by in corpus (11)

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• Shedding Light on the Galaxy Luminosity Function
• The MicroJy and NanoJy Radio Sky: Source Population and Multi-wavelength Properties
• Evolution of Galaxy Luminosity Function Using Photometric Redshifts
• A graphical analysis of the systematic error of classical binned methods in constructing luminosity functions
• The faint end of the galaxy luminosity function in Abell 1689: a steep red faint end upturn at $z=0.18$
• The Double Galaxy Cluster Abell 2465 I. Basic Properties: Optical Imaging and Spectroscopy
• Clustering and descendants of MUSYC galaxies at z<1.5
• The Evolution of Early-type Galaxies Selected by Their Spatial Clustering
• The WiggleZ Dark Energy Survey: Galaxy Evolution at 0.25 < z < 0.75 Using The Second Red-Sequence Cluster Survey (RCS-2)