The contribution of the first stars to the cosmic infrared background

By Michael R. Santos, Volker Bromm, Marc Kamionkowski Caltech, Cfa. 2001

158 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We calculate the contribution to the cosmic infrared background from very massive metal-free stars at high redshift. We explore two plausible star formation models and two limiting cases for the reprocessing of the ionizing stellar emission. We find that Population III stars may contribute significantly to the cosmic near-infrared background if the following conditions are met. (i) The first stars were massive, with M 100 M� . (ii) Molecular hydrogen can cool baryons in low-mass haloes. (iii) Population III star formation is ongoing, and not shut off through negative feedback effects. (iv) Virialized haloes form stars at ∼40 per cent efficiency up to the redshift of reionization, z ∼ 7. (v) The escape fraction of the ionizing radiation into the intergalactic medium is small. (vi) Nearly all of the stars end up in massive black holes without contributing to the metal enrichment of the Universe.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/a8573851bc554c661b381c7e9eb983e2f8990c59

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Citations in the corpus

Reionization and the Cosmic Dawn with the Square Kilometre Array (2012, background): “Theoretically, the most exciting interpretation of the NIRB is that it originates from the many small and faint galaxies at z > 6, some of which could still have massive metal-free (PopIII) stars (see e.g. Santos et al. 2002; Salvaterra & Ferrara 2003).”
Thermal and Fragmentation Properties of Star-forming Clouds in Low-Metallicity Environments (2005, unknown): “In addition, the amplitude and spectral break found at 1 m in the infrared background radiation is explained by radiation fromPopulation III stars at z > 9 (Santos et al. 2002; Salvaterra & Ferrara 2003).”
The First Stars (2003, background): “The integrated light emitted during the lifetime of Population III stars is predicted (Bond et al. 1986, Santos et al. 2002, Salvaterra & Ferrara 2003) to contribute significantly to the locally observed cosmic near-infrared background (e.g., Hauser & Dwek 2001).”
Two populations of metal-free stars in the early Universe (2006, methodology): “This possibility was investigated in detail by Santos et al. (2002), as an excess of the order ∼ 1 nW 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,…”