Beyond the galaxy luminosity function

Abstract

With the advent of large scale surveys (i.e., Legacy Surveys) it is now possible to start looking beyond the galaxy luminosity function (LF) to more detailed statistical representations of the galaxy population, i.e., multivariate distributions. In this review I first summarise the current state-of-play of the B-band global and cluster LFs and then briefly present two promising bivariate distributions: the luminosity-surface brightness plane (LSP); and the colour-luminosity plane (CLP). In both planes galaxy bulges and galaxy disks form marginally overlapping but distinct distributions, indicating two key formation/evolutionary processes (presumably merger and accretion). Forward progress in this subject now requires the routine application of reliable bulge-disk decomposition codes to allow independent investigation of these two key components.

Invited review at "Structure and Dynamics in the Local Universe" workshop, and accepted for publication in PASA

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Cited by in corpus (5)

• The Millennium Galaxy Catalogue: morphological classification and bimodality in the colour-concentration plane
• Near-Infrared and Optical Luminosity Functions from the 6dF Galaxy Survey
• Deep Near-IR Surface Photometry of 57 Galaxies in the Local Sphere of Influence
• Properties of the galaxy population in hydrodynamical simulations of clusters
• Bivariate Galaxy Luminosity Functions in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey