A Deep Multicolor Survey V: The M Dwarf Luminosity Function

Abstract

We present a study of M dwarfs discovered in a large area, multicolor survey. We employ a combination of morphological and color criteria to select M dwarfs to a limiting magnitude in V of 22, the deepest such ground-based survey for M dwarfs to date. We solve for the vertical disk stellar density law and use the resulting parameters to derive the M dwarf luminosity and mass functions from this sample. We find the stellar luminosity function peaks at M_V = 12 and declines thereafter. Our derived mass function for stars with M < 0.6 M_sun is inconsistent with a Salpeter function at the 3 sigma level; instead, we find the mass function is relatively flat for 0.6 M_sun > M > 0.1 M_sun.

Accepted for publication in AJ. 19 pages including 4 embedded postscript figures (AASTEX)

References in corpus (4)

• M Dwarfs From Hubble Space Telescope Star Counts III: The Groth Strip
• Faint M-dwarfs and the structure of the Galactic disk
• Luminosity Functions And Evolution Of Blue Galaxies In A Deep Multicolor CCD Field Survey
• A Deep Multicolor Survey. III. Additional Spectroscopy and Implications for the Number Counts of Faint Quasars

Cited by in corpus (12)

• A Universal Stellar Initial Mass Function? A Critical Look at Variations
• The Luminosity and Mass Functions of Low-Mass Stars in the Galactic Disk: II. The Field
• Gaia Early Data Release 3: The Gaia Catalogue of Nearby Stars
• Exploring the Local Milky Way: M Dwarfs as Tracers of Galactic Populations
• Optical Counterparts of Ultra Luminous X-ray Sources
• Optical Counterparts of Ultraluminous X-Ray Sources
• A Deep Multicolor Survey. VI. Near-Infrared Observations, Selection Effects, and Number Counts
• A Deep Multicolor Survey. VII. Extremely Red Objects and Galaxy Formation
• Measuring the Initial Mass Function of Low Mass Stars and Brown Dwarfs
• Tunable-filter imaging of quasar fields at z~1. I. A cluster around MRC B0450-221
• Southern Infrared Proper Motion Survey III: Constraining the mass function of low mass stars
• The field of NGC 6397 as a test for Galactic models