A Few Points Concerning Galaxy Luminosity Functions

Abstract

The luminosity function provides, arguably, the two most basic descriptions of the galaxy population: their spatial density and their distribution in luminosity. In this chapter I review some topics which I considered in my thesis. In the presence of large scale structure sophisticated techniques are needed for luminosity function. I will discuss one of these and its extension to a photometric data set. All luminosity function estimation techniques which are insensitive to large scale structure require that only the normalization, not the shape, of the luminosity function vary with radial position. In the final two sections of this chapter we will see that this is not strictly true.