The Properties and Luminosity Function of Extremely Low Luminosity Galaxies

By M. Blanton, Robert Lupton, David Schlegel, M. Strauss, J. Brinkmann, M. Fukugita, J. Loveday. 2004

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We examine a sample of low-redshift (10 h-1 Mpc < d < 150 h-1 Mpc) field galaxies including galaxies with luminosities as low as Mr - 5 log h ~ -12.5, selected from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 2 (SDSS DR2). The sample is unique in containing galaxies of extremely low luminosities in a wide range of environments, selected with uniform and well-understood criteria. We present the luminosity function, as well as the broadband properties, of low-luminosity galaxies in this sample. A Schechter function is an insufficient parameterization of the r-band luminosity function; there is an upturn in the slope for Mr - 5 log h > -18. The resulting slope at low luminosities in this sample is α2 ~ -1.3. However, we almost certainly miss a large number of galaxies at very low luminosities due to low surface brightness selection effects, and we estimate that the true low-luminosity slope may be as steep as or steeper than α2 ~ -1.5. The results here are consistent with previous SDSS results and, in the g band, roughly consistent with the results of the Two Degree Field Galaxy Redshift Survey. Extremely low luminosity galaxies are predominantly low surface brightness, exponential disks, the majority of which are red.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation, Statistical and Nonlinear Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/296b889da81be8c42affb3d71e5f19b2776d0ed6

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Citations in the corpus

Halo and subhalo demographics with Planck cosmological parameters: Bolshoi–Planck and MultiDark–Planck simulations (2016, background): “Recent analysis have found slopes between α ∼ 1.4− 1.6 (Blanton et al. 2005; Baldry, Glazebrook & Driver 2008; Baldry et al. 2012) meaning that, for some reason, the star formation efficiency in low mass halos has been suppressed (e.g. Behroozi, Wechsler & Conroy 2013b; Moster, Naab & White 2013).”
Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA): the input catalogue and star–galaxy separation (2009, background): “The completeness in the low SB regime depends on redshift success and source detection (Disney & Phillipps 1983; Blanton et al. 2005), and there is the additional issue of the accuracy of the flux measurements (Cameron & Driver 2007).”
CALIFA : a diameter-selected sample for an integral field spectroscopy galaxy survey (2014, methodology): “These were converted to AB magnitudes using offsets of 0.91, 1.39, 1.85, respectively (Blanton et al. 2005a).”
The population of barred galaxies in the local universe - I. Detection and characterisation of bars (2009, methodology): “From the ∼675 000 galaxies available in the catalogue, we took all the galaxies in the redshift range 0.01 < z < 0.04 and down to an absolute magnitude Mr < −20 (≈M∗r , Blanton et al. 2005).”
The distribution of stellar mass in the low‐redshift Universe (2009, methodology): “As discussed by Blanton et al. (2005a) the SDSS galaxy samples are incomplete for low surface brightness (SB) objects.”
Physical properties and environments of nearby galaxies (2009, methodology): “These structural trends are mostly independent of environment, as Figure 6 shows (Blanton et al. 2005a; Park et al. 2007).”
The Millennium Galaxy Catalogue : morphological classification and bimodality in the colour-concentration plane (2006, background): “Generally, these surveys now concur on the space density of luminous galaxies (MBMGC −5 log h < −16 mag), with the space density of dwarf systems (MBMGC −5 log h > −16 mag) essentially unconstrained [Driver 2004, although see Blanton et al. 2005 for a considered attempt based on SDSS data].”
CONFIRMATION OF FAINT DWARF GALAXIES IN THE M81 GROUP (2013, background): “Simulations predict relatively larger fractions of small, faint galaxies, while observationally a flatter faint-end luminosity function slope is usually found (Trentham et al. 2005; Blanton et al. 2005).”
Galaxy formation in WMAP1 and WMAP7 cosmologies (2012, background): “Symbols are taken from Blanton et al. (2005); green and red curves are model predictions for the WMAP7 and WMAP1 cosmologies, respectively.”
GALAXY STELLAR MASS FUNCTIONS FROM ZFOURGE/CANDELS: AN EXCESS OF LOW-MASS GALAXIES SINCE z = 2 AND THE RAPID BUILDUP OF QUIESCENT GALAXIES (2013, background): “Studies over the past decade have revealed that the luminosity function and the SMF are not well characterized by a standard Schechter function (Schechter 1976) due to a steepening of the slope at stellar masses below 1010 M (e.g., Baldry et al. 2004; Blanton et al. 2005).”
The Mass Function of Active Black Holes in the Local Universe (2007, background): “Deeper luminosity functions do exist (e.g., Blanton et al. 2005), but we are still left with the highly uncertain task of converting between an observed luminosity functionand a BH mass function.”
The UV-Optical Galaxy Color-Magnitude Diagram. I. Basic Properties (2007, methodology): “However, we note that this luminosity reaches about the limits for which the galaxy luminosity function has been determined from the SDSS (Blanton et al. 2005).”
The stellar mass-halo mass relation of isolated field dwarfs : a critical test of ΛCDM at the edge of galaxy formation (2016, methodology): “The SDSS stellar mass function is derived from the Blanton et al. (2005) survey of low luminosity galaxies (Baldry et al. 2008).”
zCOSMOS – 10k-bright spectroscopic sample - The bimodality in the galaxy stellar mass function: exploring its evolution with redshift (2009, background): “…‘faint-end upturn’ in the optical galaxy luminosity functions, whereby the luminosity function is found to rise steeply about 3– 5 magnitudes below the characteristic luminosity (L∗), in both clusters (Driver et al. 1994, Popesso et al. 2006) and the field (Zucca et al. 1997; Blanton et al. 2005).”
Galaxy bimodality versus stellar mass and environment (2006, background): “Other studies have analysed the average density as a function of galaxy property (Hogg et al. 2003; Blanton et al. 2005a), the clustering properties of galaxies (Wild et al. 2005; Zehavi et al. 2005; Li et al. 2006), and the relationship between galaxies and dark matter derived from galaxy-galaxy…”
Star Formation in the Milky Way and Nearby Galaxies (2012, background): “…(ideally volume-limited) selection criteria, and studies of this kind (based on UV, visible, and/or Hα observations) have been carried out by several groups (e.g., Karachentsev et al. 2004; Blanton et al. 2005; Meurer et al. 2006; Kennicutt et al. 2008; Dalcanton et al. 2009; Hunter et al. 2010).”
Intergalactic Photon Spectra from the Far-IR to the UV Lyman Limit for 0 < z < 6 and the Optical Depth of the Universe to High-Energy Gamma Rays (2005, background): “This LF takes better account of the large number of fainter galaxies that are now known (Blanton et al. 2005 and references therein.)”
Erratum: From dwarf spheroidals to cD galaxies: simulating the galaxy population in a ΛCDM cosmology (2010, background): “The discrepancy could then in part reflect differences in large-scale structure between the small low-redshift volume surveyed by Blanton et al. (2005) and DR7.”