• What is the Luminosity Function ?
  The Luminosity Function (LF) measures the density of galaxy per comoving volume and per absolute magnitude bin. The LF estimated per redshift slice is a fundamental tool to understand how the galaxy density, the star formation rate or the stellar mass evolve with the age of the Universe, for a given galaxy type (Elliptical, Spiral, etc.) and in a given environment (field, cluster, etc).
  
  
• Data
  The VIMOS-VLT Deep Survey is a deep spectroscopic survey carries on with the multi-object spectrograph VIMOS mounted on the ESO-Very Large Telescope. The first epoch deep sample (~8000 galaxies at Iab<24) is described in Le Fevre et al. 2005.
  
  
• The tool ALF
  Measuring the LF is not an easy task. We need to correct the survey selection function and the various sources of incompleteness. For that, we developed the tool ALF (Ilbert, Tresse, Zucca et al. 2005). We quantified an important bias due to k-correction effects which could affects the high-redshift LF estimators (Ilbert, Tresse, Arnouts et al. 2004).
  
  
• VVDS LF
  This work is done in the VVDS LF group (Stephane Arnouts, Sandro Bardelli, Olivier Ilbert, Laurence Tresse, Gianni Zamorani, Elena Zucca ).
  • The global LF evolution from z~0.05 out to z~2, showing a strong M* evolution in the blue bands (U and B), slightly present in the red bands (R and I).
  • The LF per spectral type showing that most of the LF evolution at z<1.5 is induced to the bluest spectral type (Irr+SB)
  • The LF per morphological type in the GOODS area showing an increase in density of the red bulge-dominated galaxies with the age of the Universe and a strong evolution of a blue compact galaxies.
  • The LF per large-scale environment out to z~1.5, showing that the large-scale environment has an impact on the galaxy properties with a steeper LF slope in under-dense regions.
  
  
  
• Ascii files
  Here is a tar file containing the ascii files with the LFs shown in these different papers.