Quick search Find article
Quick search
Find article

The Luminosity Function of Void Galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey

FREE

Fiona Hoyle1, Randall R. Rojas1, Michael S. Vogeley1 and Jon Brinkmann2

Show affiliations


We measure the r-band luminosity function (LF) of a sample of 103 void galaxies over a large range of magnitude, -21.5 < Mr < -14.5. These objects were identified by Rojas et al. from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey as residing in regions with local galaxy density δρ/ρ < -0.6 on a scale of 7 h-1 Mpc. We compare the void galaxy LF with that of galaxies in denser regions (so-called "wall" galaxies). The void galaxy LF is well fitted by a Schechter function with normalization Φ* = (0.19 ± 0.04) × 10-2 h3 Mpc-3, characteristic magnitude Mimg1.gif - 5 log h = -19.74 ± 0.11, and faint-end slope α = -1.18 ± 0.13. A comparable measurement of the LF of wall galaxies yields Φ* = (1.42 ± 0.03) × 10-2 h3 Mpc-3, Mimg1.gif - 5 log h = -20.62 ± 0.08, and α = -1.19 ± 0.07. Thus, we find that void galaxies are characteristically fainter than wall galaxies, but we do not find a significant dependence of the slope of the LF at the faint end on environment alone. The latter result suggests that there is no excess of dwarfs in voids, in contrast to predictions of cold dark matter (CDM) models. We split both the void and wall samples in half by density and find that the LFs of both the higher and lower density void galaxies and the lower density wall galaxies are similar in shape. However, the LF of wall galaxies in the highest density regions has a shallower faint-end slope, i.e., there are relatively fewer faint galaxies in the highest density regions. The LF of void galaxies is most similar to that of late-type galaxies in denser regions. The LFs of subsamples of wall galaxies that have blue g - r color, spiral-like surface brightness profiles (Sérsic index n < 2), or relatively high star formation rates [EW(Hα) > 5 Å], have brighter Mimg1.gif but faint-end slopes similar to those of void galaxies. In contrast, the LFs of wall galaxies with red g - r color, elliptical-like profiles, or low star formation rates have significantly shallower faint-end slopes and brighter values of Mimg1.gif than we find for void galaxies. We conclude that the void galaxy population is dominated by faint, late-type galaxies. The shift in M* between the void and wall galaxy LFs is consistent with the shift of the mass function in voids predicted by extended Press-Schechter theory.


Subject headings

cosmology: observations; galaxies: distances and redshifts; large-scale structure of universe; methods: statistical


Dates

Issue 2 (2005 February 20)

Received 2003 September 26, accepted for publication 2004 October 30



  1. The Luminosity Function of Void Galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey

    Fiona Hoyle et al. 2005 ApJ 620 618

  2. Effects of plastic coating on Kα yield from ultra-short pulse laser irradiated Ti foils

    F Y Khattak et al 2003 J. Phys. D: Appl. Phys. 36 2372

  3. What Happened to the NGC 6251 Counterjet?

    Dayton L. Jones and Ann E. Wehrle 2002 ApJ 580 114

  4. Deep GALEX Imaging of the COSMOS HST Field: A First Look at the Morphology of z ~ 0.7 Star-forming Galaxies

    M. A. Zamojski et al. 2007 ApJS 172 468

  5. What Magnetar Seismology Can Teach Us About Magnetic Fields

    Rashid Shaisultanov and David Eichler 2009 ApJ 702 L23

  6. The Eu valence state and valence transition in Eu(Pd1-xPtx)2Si2

    A Mitsuda et al 2000 J. Phys.: Condens. Matter 12 5287

  7. A Candidate Analog for Carbonaceous Interstellar Dust: Formation by Reactive Plasma Polymerization

    E. Kovačević et al. 2005 ApJ 623 242

  8. Absorption spectra of irradiated XRCT radiochromic film

    Martin J Butson et al 2006 Phys. Med. Biol. 51 3099

  9. The Dirac oscillator with a Coulomb-like tensor potential

    H Akcay 2007 J. Phys. A: Math. Theor. 40 6427

  10. Overview of JET results

    J. Paméla et al 2003 Nucl. Fusion 43 1540

Users also read

What's this?
This innovative new feature generates a list of articles 'also read' by other users based on them reading the original article. Article abstracts citations and references are all considered and weighted accordingly. We hope that this will help you find relevant papers for your research.

  1. Photometric Properties of Void Galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
  2. Active Galactic Nuclei in Void Regions

View by subject




Export








Please login to access our web services, or create an account if you don't yet have one.

You must have cookies enabled in your web browser to be able to login.

Username
Password

Forgotten your password? Get a new one here.