Statistics of giant luminous arcs based on the Canada-France Redshift Survey

We examine the statistics of giant luminous arcs using the galaxy luminosity function suggested by the Canada-France Redshift Survey. We choose 16 clusters of galaxies in the Einstein Medium Sensitivity Survey (EMSS) sample with z≥0.2 and L_x≥4 × 10⁴⁴ erg s^-12 for a sample of clusters that contain six giant luminous arcs. We find that the observed evolution of the galaxy luminosity function increases appreciably the predicted number of giant luminous arcs. In particular the predicted number is comparable to the observed one in the case where all the observed blue galaxies are assumed to be irregulars.