The luminosity function of field galaxies and its evolution since

Max-Planck-Institut für Astronomie, Königstuhl 17, 69117 Heidelberg, Germany

Corresponding author: J. W. Fried, fried@mpia-hd.mpg.de

Received: 17 August 2000
Accepted: 8 December 2000

Abstract

We present the B-band luminosity function and comoving space and luminosity densities for a sample of 2779 I-band selected field galaxies based on multi-color data from the CADIS survey. The sample is complete down to without correction and with completeness correction extends to . By means of a new multi-color analysis the objects are classified according to their spectral energy distributions (SEDs) and their redshifts are determined with typical errors of . We have split our sample into four redshift bins between and and into three SED bins E-Sa, Sa-Sc and starbursting (emission line) galaxies. The evolution of the luminosity function is clearly differential with SED. The normalization of the luminosity function for the E-Sa galaxies decreases towards higher redshift, and we find evidence that the comoving galaxy space density decreases with redshift as well. In contrast, we find and the comoving space density increasing with redshift for the Sa-Sc galaxies. For the starburst galaxies we find a steepening of the luminosity function at the faint end and their comoving space density increases with redshift.