Abstract
Measurements of the low-z Halpha luminosity function have a large dispersion
in the local number density of sources, and correspondingly in the SFR density.
The possible causes for these discrepancies include limited volume sampling,
biases arising from survey sample selection, different methods of correcting
for dust obscuration and AGN contamination. The Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA)
survey and Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) provide deep spectroscopic
observations over a wide sky area enabling detection of a large sample of
star-forming galaxies spanning 0.001<SFR(Halpha)<100 with which to robustly
measure the evolution of the SFR density in the low-z universe. The large
number of high SFR galaxies present in our sample allow an improved measurement
of the bright end of the luminosity function, indicating that the decrease in
number density of sources at bright luminosities is best described by a
Saunders functional form rather than the traditional Schechter function. This
result is consistent with other published luminosity functions in the FIR and
radio. For GAMA and SDSS we find the r-band apparent magnitude limit, combined
with the subsequent requirement for Halpha detection leads to an incompleteness
due to missing bright Halpha sources with faint r-band magnitudes.
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