New measurements of the cosmic infrared background fluctuations in deep Spitzer/IRAC survey data and their cosmological implications

TL;DR

This study extends measurements of cosmic infrared background fluctuations to larger scales using deep Spitzer/IRAC data, revealing significant extragalactic fluctuations likely from early universe sources, with implications for cosmology.

Contribution

It presents new large-scale measurements of CIB fluctuations, demonstrating their extragalactic origin and consistency with early universe galaxy clustering models.

Findings

CIB fluctuations extend beyond known galaxy contributions.

Galactic cirrus and zodiacal light are negligible in the fluctuations.

Fluctuation spectrum aligns with early universe galaxy clustering models.

Abstract

We extend previous measurements of cosmic infrared background (CIB) fluctuations to ~ 1 deg using new data from the Spitzer Extended Deep Survey. Two fields, with depths of ~12 hr/pixel over 3 epochs, are analyzed at 3.6 and 4.5 mic. Maps of the fields were assembled using a self-calibration method uniquely suitable for probing faint diffuse backgrounds. Resolved sources were removed from the maps to a magnitude limit of AB mag ~ 25, as indicated by the level of the remaining shot noise. The maps were then Fourier-transformed and their power spectra were evaluated. Instrumental noise was estimated from the time-differenced data, and subtracting this isolates the spatial fluctuations of the actual sky. The power spectra of the source-subtracted fields remain identical (within the observational uncertainties) for the three epochs indicating that zodiacal light contributes negligibly to the fluctuations. Comparing to 8 mic power spectra shows that Galactic cirrus cannot account for the fluctuations. The signal appears isotropically distributed on the sky as required for an extragalactic origin. The CIB fluctuations continue to diverge to > 10 times those of known galaxy populations on angular scales out to < 1 deg. The low shot noise levels remaining in the diffuse maps indicate that the large scale fluctuations arise from the spatial clustering of faint sources well below the confusion noise. The spatial spectrum of these fluctuations is in reasonable agreement with an origin in populations clustered according to the standard cosmological model (LCDM) at epochs coinciding with the first stars era.