The Cosmic Infrared Background at 1.25 and 2.2 Microns Using DIRBE and 2MASS: A Contribution Not Due to Galaxies?

By L. Cambrésy, W. Reach, C. Beichman, Thomas H. Jarrett. 2001

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Using the 2MASS second incremental data release and the zodiacal subtracted mission average maps of COBE/DIRBE, we estimate the cosmic background in the J (1.25 μm) and K (2.2 μm) bands using selected areas representing ~550 deg2 of sky. We find a J background of 22.9 ± 7.0 kJy sr-1 (54.0 ± 16.8 nW m-2 sr-1) and a K background of 20.4 ± 4.9 kJy sr-1 (27.8 ± 6.7 nW m-2 sr-1). This large-scale study shows that the main uncertainty comes from the residual zodiacal emission. The cosmic background we obtain is significantly higher than integrated galaxy counts (3.6 ± 0.8 kJy sr-1 and 5.3 ± 1.2 kJy sr-1 for J and K, respectively), suggesting either an increase of the galaxy luminosity function for magnitudes fainter than 30 mag or the existence of another contribution to the cosmic background from primeval stars, black holes, or relic particle decay.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/8bf39e885cfe7330c78b7534f9fe6a0c8d7d8f10

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Citations in the corpus

Semi-analytic modeling of the EBL and consequences for extragalactic gamma-ray spectra (2011, methodology): “The near-IR flux has been calculated from DIRBE observations by a variety of authors (Gorjian, Wright & Chary 2000; Wright & Reese 2000; Cambrésy et al. 2001; Wright 2001; Levenson, Wright & Johnson 2007) using foreground source subtraction techniques and modelling of the zodiacal light, and has…”
Infrared Telescope in Space Observations of the Near-Infrared Extragalactic Background Light (2004, methodology): “…to subtract the contribution of foreground stars and obtained a significant isotropic emission in the J, K, and L bands that was too bright to be explained by the integrated light of faint galaxies (Dwek & Arendt 1998, Gorjian et al. 2000, Wright & Reese 2000, Wright 2001, Cambrésy et al. 2001).”
GeV gamma-ray attenuation and the high-redshift UV background (2009, methodology): “Measurements in the near- and far-IR are available from the DIRBE and FIRAS experiment on the COBE satellite (Wright & Reese 2000; Wright 2001; Cambrésy et al. 2001; Levenson, Wright & Johnson 2007; Hauser et al. 1998; Lagache et al. 2000; Wright 2004; Fixsen et al. 1998).”
MODELING THE EXTRAGALACTIC BACKGROUND LIGHT FROM STARS AND DUST (2009, background): “…Background Light Direct measurement of the EBL energy density is difficult due to contamination from foreground zodiacal and Galactic light (Bernstein et al. 2002; Gorjian et al. 2000; Dwek & Arendt 1998; Cambrésy et al. 2001; Wright & Reese 2000; Levenson et al. 2007; Hauser et al. 1998).”
Extragalactic optical-infrared background radiation, its time evolution and the cosmic photon-photon opacity (2008, background): “…by various groups at a levelof several tens of nW/m2/sr, after subtraction of the stellar contribution (Gorjian et al. 2000, Wright & Reese 2000, Cambresy et al. 2001, Dwek et al. 2005), but with substantial uncertainty due to the poorly understood contribution of the Zodiacal light, and very…”
The contribution of the first stars to the cosmic infrared background (2001, methodology): “It is this unexplained excess, measured by Cambrésy et al. (2001) at 1.25 µm and by Cambrésy et al. (2001) and Wright & Johnson (2001) at 2.2 µm, that we are trying to fit with our models, while conforming to upper limits at other wavelenths.”
New limits on the density of the extragalactic background light in the optical to the far-infrared from the spectra of all known TeV blazars (2007, result): “It is compatible with the detections reported by Dwek & Arendt (1998), Gorjian et al. (2000), Wright & Reese (2000), and Cambrésy et al. (2001).”
First Stars, Very Massive Black Holes, and Metals (2001, methodology): “In a recent estimate of the cosmic background at 1.25 µm and 2.2 µm (corresponding to the J and K bands respectively) using 2MASS and the DIRBE results Cambresy et al. (2001), also find an excess (significantly higher than the integrated galaxy counts in the J and K bands) suggesting the…”
Semi-analytic modelling of the extragalactic background light and consequences for extragalactic gamma-ray spectra: Modelling of the EBL and gamma-ray spectra (2012, methodology): “The near-IR flux has been calculated from DIRBE observations by a variety of authors (Gorjian, Wright & Chary 2000; Wright & Reese 2000; Cambrésy et al. 2001; Wright 2001; Levenson, Wright & Johnson 2007) using foreground source subtraction techniques and modelling of the zodiacal light, and has…”
Two populations of metal-free stars in the early Universe (2006, methodology): “…m−2 sr−1 in the wavelength regime 1 – 2 µm was detected by the Diffuse Infrared Background Experiment (DIRBE) on the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE; e.g. Cambrésy et al. 2001). c© 0000 RAS, MNRAS 000, 000–000 The possible contribution to this wavelength range is made up of Ly-α photons,…”