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On the origin of near-infrared extragalactic background light anisotropy
A diffuse cosmic glow is not primordial
A cumulative map of all photons ever emitted by any star or galaxy is a highly desirable historical record of the universe's evolution. For this reason, cosmologists have sought to measure this diffuse distribution of light: the extragalactic background light. Zemcov et al. sent up a rocket to measure the fluctuations in this faint background and found largescale fluctuations greater than known galaxies alone should produce (see the Perspective by Moseley). Stars tidally stripped from their host galaxies are the most likely culprit, rather than unknown primordial galaxies.
Abstract
Extragalactic background light (EBL) anisotropy traces variations in the total production of photons over cosmic history and may contain faint, extended components missed in galaxy point-source surveys. Infrared EBL fluctuations have been attributed to primordial galaxies and black holes at the epoch of reionization (EOR) or, alternately, intrahalo light (IHL) from stars tidally stripped from their parent galaxies at low redshift. We report new EBL anisotropy measurements from a specialized sounding rocket experiment at 1.1 and 1.6 micrometers. The observed fluctuations exceed the amplitude from known galaxy populations, are inconsistent with EOR galaxies and black holes, and are largely explained by IHL emission. The measured fluctuations are associated with an EBL intensity that is comparable to the background from known galaxies measured through number counts and therefore a substantial contribution to the energy contained in photons in the cosmos.
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Supplementary Material
Summary
Materials and Methods
Supplementary Text
Figs. S1 to S27
Tables S1 to S2
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References and Notes
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Published In
Science
Volume 346 | Issue 6210
7 November 2014
7 November 2014
Copyright
Copyright © 2014, American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Submission history
Received: 1 July 2014
Accepted: 3 October 2014
Published in print: 7 November 2014
Acknowledgments
Our thanks to O. Doré, J. Filippini, and K. Ganga for useful conversations and comments throughout the course of this work and K. Helgason for kindly providing models of the statistics of the near-infrared CIB. The authors acknowledge the excellent support from the NASA sounding rockets program that was essential in developing, testing, qualifying, launching, and recovering our payloads. The CIBER auto- and cross-power spectra are available for public download at http://ciber.caltech.edu/zemcovetal. This work was supported by NASA APRA research grants NNX07AI54G, NNG05WC18G, NNX07AG43G, NNX07AJ24G, and NNX10AE12G. Initial support was provided by an award to J.B. from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Director’s Research and Development Fund. Japanese participation in CIBER was supported by KAKENHI (20·34, 18204018, 19540250, 21340047, and 21111004) from Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) and the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT). Korean participation in CIBER was supported by the Pioneer Project from Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (KASI). M.Z. and P.K. acknowledge support from NASA Postdoctoral Program fellowships, A.C. acknowledges support from an NSF CAREER award AST-0645427 and NSF AST-1313319, and K.T. acknowledges support from the JSPS Research Fellowship for Young Scientists. This publication makes use of data products from the Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS), which is a joint project of the University of Massachusetts and the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center/California Institute of Technology, funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the National Science Foundation. This work made use of images and/or data products provided by the National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO) Deep Wide-Field Survey (NDWFS), which is supported by NOAO, operated by AURA, Inc., under a cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation.
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