Impact of the short-term luminosity evolution on luminosity function of star-forming galaxies

Abstract

An evolution of luminosity of galaxies in emission lines or wavelength ranges in which they are sensitive to the star formation process is caused by burning out of the most massive O-class stars during a few million years after a starburst. We study the impact of this effect on the luminosity function (LF) of a sample of star-forming galaxies. We introduce several types of LFs: an initial LF after a starburst, current, time-averaged and sample ones. We find the relations between them in general and specify them in the case of the luminosity evolution law proposed for the luminous compact galaxies. We obtain the sample LF for the cases the initial one is described by the pure Schechter function or the log-normal distribution and analyze the properties of these LFs. As a result we get two new types of LFs to fit the LF of a sample of star-forming galaxies.