The massive end of the luminosity and stellar mass functions: Dependence on the fit to the light profile

Understand

In addition to the large systematic differences arising from assumptions about the stellar mass-to-light ratio, the massive end of the stellar mass function is rather sensitive to how one fits the light profiles of the most luminous galaxies.

• We quantify this by comparing the luminosity and stellar mass functions based on SDSS cmodel magnitudes, and PyMorph single-Sersic and Sersic-Exponential fits to the surface brightness profiles of galaxies in the SDSS.
• The PyMorph fits return more light, so that the predicted masses are larger than when cmodel magnitudes are used.
• As a result, the total stellar mass density at z~0.1 is about 1.2x larger than in our previous analysis of the SDSS.