Estimates For The Luminosity Function And Selection Function Of Redshift Surveys

. We present a new method to obtain a non-parametric maximum likelihood estimate of the luminosity function and the selection function of a flux limited redshift survey. The method parameterizes the selection function as a series of step-wise power laws and allows possible evolution of the luminosity function. We apply our estimators to the 1.2-Jy survey of IRAS galaxies. We find a far-infrared luminosity function in good agreement with previously published results. 1. Introduction Flux limited redshift surveys are a major tool for studying the large-scale structure of the Universe. However, such catalogues show a strong decline of the mean number density of galaxies as a function of distance. Most of the statistics that are used to analyse these surveys require an accurate knowledge of this dependence, which is described in terms of the selection function (SF). Hence the accuracy of the adopted SF can limit the reliability of such large-scale structure studies. Closely related to the..