EventsPast talk

Santa Barbara Astro Lunch

Yi-Kuan Chiang

ASIAA

Cosmic Infrared Background Tomography and a Census of Cosmic Dust and Star Formation

When
Wednesday 26 Feb 2025
12:00–1:00 pm PST
Where
Broida 3302
Series
A weekly informal gathering of UCSB, LCO and KITP astrophysicists to hear about current research by locals and visitors.

From the calendar

The cosmic infrared background (CIB) traces the aggregate dust emission from all galaxies, providing a powerful probe for precision astrophysics and cosmology. We measure its evolving spectrum by cross-correlating diffuse far-infrared photons from Planck, Herschel, and IRAS with SDSS/BOSS/eBOSS galaxies up to z=4. This tomographic CIB spectrum reveals a broad, mildly evolving dust temperature distribution. We constrain cosmic dust density, Omega_dust, finding it peaks at z~1.5 and declines at late times, suggesting significant dust destruction. We measure total infrared luminosity density to sub-10% precision, uncovering a highly dust-obscured census of cosmic star formation over 0 < z < 4. For the first time, we also detect cosmic CO and CII backgrounds without line confusion. This work highlights large-scale data fusion in survey astronomy, integrating 10^8 intensity voxels across a 50-fold frequency range and 3 × 10^6 reference redshifts via 10^6 cross-correlations.