GAMA/DEVILS: Constraining the cosmic star-formation history from improved measurements of the 0.3-2.2 micron Extragalactic Background Light

TL;DR

This paper presents improved measurements of the optical extragalactic background light using galaxy surveys, providing new constraints on the cosmic star formation history and demonstrating consistency with gamma-ray observations and galaxy evolution models.

Contribution

The study combines multiple galaxy surveys to accurately measure the optical EBL and constrains the cosmic star formation history with reduced uncertainties.

Findings

IGL and gamma-ray measurements are consistent within ~10%.

The peak star-formation rate is 0.066-0.076 Msol/yr/Mpc^3 at 9.1-10.9 Gyrs ago.

The optical EBL aligns with galaxy evolution models and star-formation estimates.

Abstract

We present a revised measurement of the optical extragalactic background light (EBL), based on the contribution of resolved galaxies to the integrated galaxy light (IGL). The cosmic optical background radiation (COB), encodes the light generated by star-formation, and provides a wealth of information about the cosmic star formation history (CSFH). We combine wide and deep galaxy number counts from the Galaxy And Mass Assembly survey (GAMA) and Deep Extragalactic VIsible Legacy Survey (DEVILS), along with the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) archive and other deep survey datasets, in 9 multi-wavelength filters to measure the COB in the range from 0.35 micron to 2.2 micron. We derive the luminosity density in each band independently and show good agreement with recent and complementary estimates of the optical-EBL from very high-energy (VHE) experiments. Our error analysis suggests that the IGL and Gamma-ray measurements are now fully consistent to within ~10%, suggesting little need for any additional source of diffuse light beyond the known galaxy population. We use our revised IGL measurements to constrain the cosmic star-formation history, and place amplitude constraints on a number of recent estimates. As a consistency check, we can now demonstrate convincingly, that the CSFH, stellar mass growth, and the optical-EBL provide a fully consistent picture of galaxy evolution. We conclude that the peak of star-formation rate lies in the range 0.066-0.076 Msol/yr/Mpc^3 at a lookback time of 9.1 to 10.9 Gyrs.