Multiwavelength Luminosity Functions of Galaxies

I have developed a technique for measuring multi-variate luminosity functions of galaxies. Multivariate or multi-wavelength luminosity functions will reveal the interplay between star formation, chemical evolution, and absorption and re-emission of dust within evolving galaxy populations. By using principle component analysis to reduce the dimensionality of the problem, I optimally extract the relevant photometric information from large galaxy catalogs. As a demonstration of the technique, I derive the multiwavelength luminosity function for the galaxies in the released SDSS catalog, and show that the results are consistent with those obtained by traditional methods. This technique will be applicable to catalogs of galaxies from datasets obtained by the SIRTF and GALEX missions.