# A Deep Multicolor Survey. V. The M Dwarf Luminosity Function

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 Title: A Deep Multicolor Survey. V. The M Dwarf Luminosity Function Creators: Martini, Paul; Osmer, Patrick S. Keywords: stars: late-type stars: low-mass, brown dwarfs stars: luminosity function, mass function Issue Date: 1998-11 Publisher: American Astronomical Society Citation: Paul Martini and Patrick S. Osmer, "A Deep Multicolor Survey. V. The M Dwarf Luminosity Function," The Astronomical Journal 116, no. 5 (1998), doi:10.1086/300605 DOI: 10.1086/300605 Abstract: We present a study of M dwarfs discovered in a large-area, multicolor survey. We employ a combination of morphological and color criteria to select M dwarfs to a limiting magnitude in V of 22, the deepest such ground-based survey for M dwarfs to date. We solve for the vertical disk stellar density law and use the resulting parameters to derive the M dwarf luminosity and mass functions from this sample. We find that the stellar luminosity function peaks at M_V ~ 12 and declines thereafter. Our derived mass function for stars with M < 0.6 Msun is inconsistent with a Salpeter function at the 3 σ level; instead, we find that the mass function is relatively flat for 0.6 Msun > M > 0.1 Msun. ISSN: 1538-3881 URI: http://hdl.handle.net/1811/48209