THE STAR FORMATION RATE IN THE REIONIZATION ERA AS INDICATED BY GAMMA-RAY BURSTS

By Matthew D. Kistler, H. Yüksel, J. Beacom, A. Hopkins, J. Stuart B. Wyithe. 2009

228 citations recorded by the source corpus.

High-redshift gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) offer an extraordinary opportunity to study aspects of the early universe, including the cosmic star formation rate (SFR). Motivated by the two recent highest-z GRBs, GRB 080913 at z ≃ 6.7 and GRB 090423 at z ≃ 8.1, and more than four years of Swift observations, we first confirm that the GRB rate does not trace the SFR in an unbiased way. Correcting for this, we find that the implied SFR to beyond z = 8 is consistent with Lyman Break Galaxy-based measurements after accounting for unseen galaxies at the faint end of the UV luminosity function. We show that this provides support for the integrated star formation in the range 6 ≲ z ≲ 8 to have been alone sufficient to reionize the universe.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/226d476151ebbfadf7851feaca090eb094c89d41

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The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. L. Hernquist
2. C. Conroy
3. P. Hopkins
4. P. V. van Dokkum
5. Richard S. Ellis
6. R. Somerville
7. M. Franx
8. R. Dav'e

In Instrumentation

1. C. Conroy
2. P. V. van Dokkum
3. Richard S. Ellis
4. P. Hopkins
5. L. Hernquist
6. M. Franx
7. R. Bouwens
8. I. Labbé

Citations in the corpus

• The effect of pair-instability mass loss on black-hole mergers (2016, methodology): “…analysis used by Madau & Dickinson (2014) does not fully correct for the small galaxies not seen in UV surveys; the predicted high-redshift SFR cannot reionize the Universe with stars and it underpredicts the observed GRB rate (Kistler et al. 2009; Horiuchi et al. 2011; Mitchell-Wynne et al. 2015).”
• Herschel PEP/HerMES: the redshift evolution (0 ≤ z ≤ 4) of dust attenuation and of the total (UV+IR) star formation rate density (2013, background): “Additionaly, it remains quite puzzling that GRB-based analyses suggest a much shallower decrease (Kistler et al.(2009), Robertson & Ellis(2012)) than Lyman break galaxies.”
• Galaxy and Mass Assembly (GAMA): ugriz galaxy luminosity functions (2011, background): “Looking back in time with increasing redshift, the star formation rate appears to peak at redshift z ' 1, above which it plateaus and slowly declines towards z ' 6 (Cole et al. 2000; Hopkins 2004; Hopkins & Beacom 2006; Yuksel et al. 2008; Kistler et al. 2009).”
• z ∼ 7 GALAXIES IN THE HUDF: FIRST EPOCH WFC3/IR RESULTS (2009, background): “…over the whole time span from z ∼ 7 until z ∼ 2 and such a steep faint-end slope has strong implications for reionization, providing support to a scenario in which low luminosity galaxies provide the bulk of the flux for ionizing the universe (see also Oesch et al. 2009a; Kistler et al. 2009).”
• PROBING THE DAWN OF GALAXIES AT z ∼ 9–12: NEW CONSTRAINTS FROM HUDF12/XDF AND CANDELS DATA (2013, background): “These measurements can provide additional constraints on the total star-formation rate density in the very early universe, since GRB rates are thought to be an unbiased tracer of the total star-formation rate density (e.g. Kistler et al. 2009; Trenti et al. 2012; Robertson & Ellis 2012).”
• UV CONTINUUM SLOPE AND DUST OBSCURATION FROM z ∼ 6 TO z ∼ 2: THE STAR FORMATION RATE DENSITY AT HIGH REDSHIFT (2009, background): “Since GRBs are perhaps a good tracer of massive star formation in the high redshift universe (e.g., Yüksel et al. 2008; Li 2008; Kistler et al. 2009) and may not be biased to lower metallicity environments (Prochaska et al. 2007), we would expect GRBs to occur in galaxies roughly in proportion to…”
• Galacticus: A Semi-Analytic Model of Galaxy Formation (2010, background): “Red points show observational estimates from a variety of sources as compiled by Hopkins (2004) while green points show the star formation rate inferred from gamma ray bursts by Kistler et al. (2009). The blue line shows the result from the example Galacticus model.”
• GRB hosts through cosmic time - VLT/X-Shooter emission-line spectroscopy of 96 γ-ray-burst-selected galaxies at 0.1 (2015, background): “…Chary et al. 2007; Chen et al. 2009; Tanvir et al. 2012), faintest luminosities (e.g., Vreeswijk et al. 2001; Trenti et al. 2012), as well as the global star formation rate (SFR) density up to the epoch of re-ionization (e.g., Kistler et al. 2009; Robertson & Ellis 2012; Elliott et al. 2012).”
• THE AVERAGE STAR FORMATION HISTORIES OF GALAXIES IN DARK MATTER HALOS FROM z = 0–8 (2012, methodology): “We have in addition excluded constraints from long gamma-ray burst SFR estimates for this work (e.g., Kistler et al. 2009); we feel that not enough data points are available at this time toindependently calibrate the evolution of known systematicbiases (e.g., higher GRB rates in low-luminosity…”
• The luminosity function and the rate of Swift's Gamma Ray Bursts (2009, methodology): “Another useful comparison is with Kistler et al. (2009) who modeled the bias of the GRB rate with SFR in the range 0 < z < 4 and used it together with the high-z bursts data to estimate the high-z SFR.”
• Galaxy luminosities, stellar masses, sizes, velocity dispersions as a function of morphological type (2009, background): “(However, we note that gamma-ray burst based estimates from, e.g. Kistler et al. 2009, suggest this is not a closed issue.)”
• Inferences on the timeline of reionization at z ∼ 8 from the KMOS Lens-Amplified Spectroscopic Survey (2019, background): “…galaxies, and observations of lensed high-redshift galaxies, and local dwarfs, indicate galaxies fainter than Muv = −17 likely exist at z ∼ 8 (e.g., Kistler et al. 2009; Tanvir et al. 2012; Trenti et al. 2012; Alavi et al. 2014; Weisz & Boylan-Kolchin 2017; Livermore et al. 2017; Bouwens et al.…”
• The Universe Is Reionizing at z ∼ 7: Bayesian Inference of the IGM Neutral Fraction Using Lyα Emission from Galaxies (2017, background): “…Frontier Fields (Lotz et al. 2017), we know there are large populations of faint galaxies at z > 6 (Yue et al. 2014; Atek et al. 2015a; Livermore et al. 2017; Vanzella et al. 2017), and GRB host galaxy searches indicate far fainter galaxies must also exist (Kistler et al. 2009; Trenti et al. 2012).”
• THE COSMIC RATE, LUMINOSITY FUNCTION, AND INTRINSIC CORRELATIONS OF LONG GAMMA-RAY BURSTS (2009, background): “The apparently smooth continuation of the rate density above z = 4 suggests the presence of no new evolutionary effects (see, also, Kistler et al. 2009).”
• CONNECTING THE GAMMA RAY BURST RATE AND THE COSMIC STAR FORMATION HISTORY: IMPLICATIONS FOR REIONIZATION AND GALAXY EVOLUTION (2011, methodology): “…been suggested that extending the search to much fainter sources will help bridge the gap between the galaxy- and GRB-inferredρ̇⋆(z) (see Figure 4 of Kistler et al. 2009 and Choi & Nagamine 2011), but even with the very steepγ = −2 the luminosity function would need to continue down toMAB = −(7−…”
• METALLICITY-DEPENDENT QUENCHING OF STAR FORMATION AT HIGH REDSHIFT IN SMALL GALAXIES (2011, background): “…to be rising in time from z > 8 till z ∼ 3, and it remains high till z ∼ 1 (e.g. Hopkins & Beacom 2006; krumholz@ucolick.edu dekel@phys.huji.ac.il Kistler et al. 2009; Bouwens et al. 2010; Horiuchi & Beacom 2010), while ΛCDM predicts a strong decline of cosmological inflow rate (IR) into…”