The ultraviolet galaxy luminosity function from GALEX data:: Color-dependent evolution at low redshift

We present measurements of the far-UV (FUV; 1530 Angstrom) and near-UV (NUV; 2310 Angstrom) galaxy luminosity functions (LFs) at low redshift (z less than or equal to 0.2) from Galaxy Evolution Explorer observations matched to the Two-Degree Field (2dF) Galaxy Redshift Survey. We split our FUV and NUV samples into two UV - b(J) color bins and two redshift bins. As observed at optical wavelengths, the local LF of the bluest galaxies tend to have steeper faint-end slopes and fainter characteristic magnitudes M-* than the reddest subsamples. We find evidence for color-dependent evolution at very low redshift in both bands, with bright blue galaxies becoming dominant in the highest redshift bin. The evolution of the total LF is consistent with an similar to 0.3 mag brightening between and z similar to 0 0.13, in agreement with the first analysis of deeper GALEX fields probing adjacent and higher redshifts.