A DEEP MULTICOLOR SURVEY - V - THE M-DWARF LUMINOSITY FUNCTION

We present a study of M dwarfs discovered in a large-area, multicolor survey. We employ a combination of morphological and color criteria to select M dwarfs to a limiting magnitude in V of 22, the deepest such ground-based survey for M dwarfs to date. We solve for the vertical di sk stellar density law and use the resulting parameters to derive the M dwarf luminosity and mass functions from this sample. We find that t he stellar luminosity function peaks at M-V similar to 12 and declines thereafter. Our derived mass function for stars with M < 0.6 M. is in consistent with a Salpeter function at the 3 sigma level; instead, we find that the mass function is relatively flat for 0.6 M. > M > 0.1 M. .