Hyper Suprime-Camera Survey of the AKARI NEP wide field

TL;DR

This study combines deep optical imaging from Hyper Suprime-Camera with AKARI's infrared data to identify and characterize previously undetected IR sources, aiming to better understand the obscured cosmic star formation history.

Contribution

It presents a novel multi-wavelength approach to determine redshifts and IR luminosities of faint IR sources, enhancing the census of dust-obscured star formation and AGN activity.

Findings

Identification of 11,000 previously undetected IR sources

Potential doubling of the cosmic star-formation rate density at z~1-2

Enhanced understanding of dust-obscured star formation and AGN activity

Abstract

The extragalactic background suggests half the energy generated by stars reprocessed into the infrared (IR) by dust. At z$\sim$1.3, 90\% of star formation is obscured by dust. To fully understand the cosmic star formation history, it is critical to investigate infrared emission. AKARI has made deep mid-IR observation using its continuous 9-band filters in the NEP field (5.4 deg$^2$), using $\sim$10\% of the entire pointed observations available throughout its lifetime. However, there remain 11,000 AKARI's infrared sources undetected with the previous CFHT/Megacam imaging ($r\sim$25.9ABmag). Redshift and IR luminosity of these sources are unknown. These sources may contribute significantly to the cosmic star-formation rate density (CSFRD). For example, if they all lie at 1$<z<$2, the CSFRD will be twice as high at the epoch. We are carrying out deep imaging of the NEP field in 5 broad bands ($g,r,i,z,$ and $y$) using Hyper Suprime-Camera (HSC), which has 1.5 deg field of view in diameter on Subaru 8m telescope. This will provide photometric redshift information, and thereby IR luminosity for the previously-undetected 11,000 faint AKARI IR sources. Combined with AKARI's mid-IR AGN/SF diagnosis, and accurate mid-IR luminosity measurement, this will allow a complete census of cosmic star-formation/AGN accretion history obscured by dust.