The Hawaii+Anglo‐Australian ObservatoryK‐Band Galaxy Redshift Survey. I. The LocalK‐Band Luminosity Function

We present the K-band local luminosity function derived froma sample of 1056bright (K<15) K-selected galaxies from the Hawaii-AAO K-band redshift survey.The Hawaii-AAO K-band redshift survey covers 4 equatorial fields with a totalarea of 8.22 $\deg^2$. We derive both the non-parametric and Schechterluminosity function from our data, and determine$M^*(K)=-23.70\pm0.08+5\log_{10}(h)$, $\alpha=-1.37\pm0.10$ and$\phi^*=0.013\pm0.003 h^3 \Mpc^{-3}$ for a universe with $\Omega_m=0.3$ and$\Omega_{\Lambda}=0.7$. We also measure the K-band luminosity function for theearly- and later-type galaxies from our morphologically classified subsample.It appears that later-type galaxies have a fainter $M^*$ and a steep slope,while early-type galaxies have a much brighter $M^*$ and a quite flat slope intheir K-band luminosity functions. This is consistent with what have been foundin optical type dependent luminosity function. The K-band luminosity densityderived using our luminosity function is now measured at a similar redshiftdepth to optical luminosity densities in the SDSS redshift survey. It is 2times higher than the previous measurement from the shallower 2MASS sample andresolves the previously reported discrepancies between optical and near-IRluminosity densities