A quantitative assessment of completeness correction methods in UV Luminosity function calculations

Wednesday 24 Mar 2021 @ 12:00 p.m., David Caro building, Level 2, Hercus Theatre (+Zoom)
Dr Nicha Leethochawalit, University of Melbourne; Email: nicha.leethochawalit@unimelb.edu.au

Abstract

Having accurate completeness functions (and/or determining the survey effective volume) is crucial to the determination of the rest-frame ultraviolet luminosity functions (UVLFs) all the way back to the epoch of reionization. Most studies use injection-recovery simulations to determine completeness functions. Although conceptually the same, these simulations have subtle but important differences in their definition of the completeness function across existing studies. In turn, this requires implementation of different methods to obtain the final determination of the UVLFs. Here, we discuss the advantages and limitations of existing methods using a reference set of mock observations, and then compare the methods when applied to the same set of Hubble Legacy Field (HLF) images. We find that some methods may suffer limitations in a presence of substantial photometric scatter and/or steep luminosity functions.