Abstract
We examine the faint-end slope of the rest-frame V-band luminosity function (LF), with respect to galaxy spectral type, of field galaxies with redshift z < 0.5, using a sample of 80,820 galaxies with photometric redshifts in the 2 deg2 Cosmic Evolution Survey (COSMOS) field. For all galaxy spectral types combined, the LF slope ranges from –1.24 to –1.12, from the lowest redshift bin to the highest. In the lowest redshift bin (0.02 < z < 0.1), where the magnitude limit is MV≲ − 13, the slope ranges from α ∼ − 1.1 for galaxies with early-type spectral energy distributions (SEDs) to α ∼ − 1.9 for galaxies with low-extinction starburst SEDs. In each galaxy SED category (early-type, Sbc, Scd+Irr, and starburst), the faint-end slopes grow shallower with increasing redshift; in the highest redshift bin (0.4 < z < 0.5), α ∼ − 0.5 and –1.3 for early types and starbursts, respectively. The steepness of α at lower redshifts could be qualitatively explained by LF evolution, or by large numbers of faint dwarf galaxies, perhaps of low surface brightness, that are not detected at higher redshifts.
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Based on observations with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA), Inc., under NASA contract NAS 5-26555; also based on data collected at Kitt Peak National Observatory, Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory, and the National Optical Astronomy Observatory, which are operated by AURA, Inc., under cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation; at the Subaru Telescope, which is operated by the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan; with XMM-Newton, an ESA science mission with instruments and contributions directly funded by ESA Member States and NASA; at the European Southern Observatory under Large Program 175.A-0839, Chile; at the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope with MegaPrime/MegaCam, operated as a joint project by the CFHT Corporation, CEA/DAPNIA, the National Research Council of Canada, the Canadian Astronomy Data Centre, the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique de France, TERAPIX, and the University of Hawaii; and the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, which is a facility of the National Science Foundation operated under cooperative agreement by AURA, Inc.