The faint end of the galaxy luminosity function

By N. Trentham, R. B. Tully. 2002

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We present and discuss optical measurements of the faint end of the galaxy luminosity function down to M R = -10 in five different local environments of varying galaxy density and morphological content. The environments we studied, in order of decreasing galaxy density, are the Virgo Cluster, the NGC 1407 Group, the Coma I Group, the Leo Group and the NGC 1023 Group. Our results come from a deep wide-angle survey with the National Astronomical Observatories of Japan Subaru 8-m Telescope on Mauna Kea and are sensitive down to very faint surface-brightness levels. Galaxies were identified as group or cluster members on the basis of their surface brightness and morphology. The faintest galaxies in our sample have R ∼ 22.5. There were thousands of fainter galaxies but we cannot distinguish cluster members from background galaxies at these faint limits so do not attempt to determine a luminosity function fainter than M R = -10. In all cases, there are far fewer dwarfs than the numbers of low-mass haloes anticipated by cold dark matter theory. The mean logarithmic slope of the luminosity function between M R = -18 and M R = -10 is α ≃ -1.2, far shallower than the cold dark matter mass function slope of α ≃ -1.8. We would therefore need to be missing about 90 per cent of the dwarfs at the faint end of our sample in all the environments we study to achieve consistency with CDM theory. It is unlikely that such large numbers of dwarfs are missed because (i) the data are deep enough that we are sensitive to very low surface brightness galaxies, and (ii) the seeing is good enough that we can have some confidence in our ability to distinguish high surface brightness dwarfs from background galaxies brighter than R = 22.5. One caveat is that we miss compact members taken to be background galaxies, but such objects (like M32) are thought to be rare.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/21d9754cfec2feb6230892f722f2b09bc38e3d3e

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Citations in the corpus

CONFIRMATION OF FAINT DWARF GALAXIES IN THE M81 GROUP (2013, methodology): “The steepest slope consistent with our data, shown by the 1σ fit (dotted line), is −1.3 whereas Cold Dark Matter theory predicts slopes for the mass function of −1.8 (Trentham & Tully 2002).”
Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA): the galaxy stellar mass function at z < 0.06 (2011, methodology): “Measurements of the GLF reaching low luminosities have been made for the Local Group (Koposov et al. 2008), selected groups (Trentham & Tully 2002; Chiboucas, Karachentsev, & Tully 2009), clusters (Sabatini e al.”
Galaxy and Mass Assembly (GAMA): ugriz galaxy luminosity functions (2011, background): “…been a discrepancy between the measured number density of low-luminosity galaxies (the ‘faint end’ of the LF) and predictions from cold dark matter (CDM) hierarchical simulations, in the sense that fewer low-luminosity galaxies than predicted by most models are observed (Trentham & Tully 2002).”
The Optical and Near-Infrared Properties of Galaxies. I. Luminosity and Stellar Mass Functions (2003, background): “…the behavior of the difficult-to-measure fainter galaxies may depend on environment (Tully et al. 2002), although these galaxies do not exis in sufficient numbers to contribute significantly to the luminosity density of the local Universe (e.g., Zabludoff & Mulchaey 2000; Trentham & Tully 2002).”
Internal Dynamics, Structure, and Formation of Dwarf Elliptical Galaxies. II. Rotating versus Nonrotating Dwarfs (2002, background): “Dwarf elliptical (dE) galaxies are the dominant galaxy type in nearby galaxy clusters, accounting for more than 75% of all objects in these regions down to a limiting magnitude of MV = 14 (Bingelli, Sandage, & Tammann 1988; Trentham & Tully 2002).”
The stellar mass-halo mass relation of isolated field dwarfs : a critical test of ΛCDM at the edge of galaxy formation (2016, methodology): “This solves the ‘volume problem’ by renormalising the group stellar mass functions derived from Trentham & Tully (2002) to match SDSS at the bright end (see §3).”
Feedback and metal enrichment in cosmological SPH simulations – II. A multiphase model with supernova energy feedback (2006, background): “These trends with total mass are very encouraging, suggesting that our feedback model may reproduce the shape of the faint end of the galaxy luminosity function in hierarchical clustering scenarios (e.g. Trentham & Tully 2002).”
An Hα Imaging Survey of Galaxies in the Local 11 Mpc Volume (2004, methodology): “—TheComa I group (NBG cloud 14 group 1), which was previously assigned a distance of 9.7 Mpc in the NBG, is now known to lie at an estimated distance of 16.4 Mpc (Trentham & Tully 2002).”
Towards a concordant model of halo occupation statistics (2006, result): “At around the cluster scale the models favour fairly steep faint-end slopes with α̃ −1.2 ± 0.3 (68 per cent CL), in good agreement with independent studies of the luminosity functions of individual clusters (e.g. Sandage, Bingelli & Tammann 1985; Beijersbergen et al. 2002; Trentham & Hodgkin 2002; T”
On Departures from a Power Law in the Galaxy Correlation Function (2003, result): “A mean multiplicity of 5.4 at 1014.5 h 1 M might look low at first glance, but our luminosity threshold is fairly high ( 1.5L * ), and this multi- plicity is reasonably consistent with the number of comparably luminous galaxies in Virgo (Trentham & Tully 2002) and with the measured richness or lumin”
Revised Rates of Stellar Disruption in Galactic Nuclei (2003, methodology): “Using the central density normalization of Trentham & Tully (2002), we find a total rate of tidal flaring due to dwarf galaxies in Virgo of∼ 0.16 yr−1.”