Mid-Infrared Luminosity Function of Local Star-Forming Galaxies in the
  NEP-Wide Survey Field of AKARI
  We present mid-infrared (MIR) luminosity functions (LFs) of local
star-forming (SF) galaxies in the AKARI NEP-Wide Survey field. In order to
derive more accurate luminosity function, we used spectroscopic sample only.
Based on the NEP-Wide point source catalogue containing a large number of
infrared (IR) sources distributed over the wide (5.4 sq. deg.) field, we
incorporated the spectroscopic redshift data for about 1790 selected targets
obtained by optical follow-up surveys with MMT/Hectospec and WIYN/Hydra. The
AKARI continuous 2 to 24 micron wavelength coverage as well as photometric data
from optical u band to NIR H-band with the spectroscopic redshifts for our
sample galaxies enable us to derive accurate spectral energy distributions
(SEDs) in the mid-infrared. We carried out SED fit analysis and employed 1/Vmax
method to derive the MIR (8, 12, and 15 micron rest-frame) luminosity
functions. We fit our 8 micron LFs to the double power-law with the power index
of alpha= 1.53 and beta= 2.85 at the break luminosity. We made extensive
comparisons with various MIR LFs from several literatures. Our results for
local galaxies from the NEP region are generally consistent with other works
for different fields over wide luminosity ranges. The comparisons with the
results from the NEP-Deep data as well as other LFs imply the luminosity
evolution from higher redshifts towards the present epoch.
