July 28, 2025 to August 1, 2025
Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics
America/Toronto timezone

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

Jul 31, 2025, 4:00 p.m.
10m
PI/1-100 - Theatre (Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics)

PI/1-100 - Theatre

Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics

190
Contributed Talk

Speaker

Dr Yi-Kuan Chiang (ASIAA)

Description

The cosmic far-infrared background (CIB) encodes dust emission from all galaxies and carries valuable information on structure formation, star formation, and chemical enrichment across cosmic time. However, its redshift-dependent spectrum remains poorly constrained due to line-of-sight projection effects. We address this in arXiv:2504.05384 by cross-correlating 11 far-infrared intensity maps spanning a 50-fold frequency range from Planck, Herschel, and IRAS, with spectroscopic galaxies and quasars from SDSS I-IV tomographically. We mitigate foregrounds using CSFD, a CIB-free Milky Way dust map, and also remove the tomographic SZ background from hot gas in the cosmic web detected in arXiv:2006.14650. These cross-correlation amplitudes on two-halo scales trace bias-weighted CIB redshift distributions and collectively yield a 60σ detection of the evolving CIB spectrum, sampled across hundreds of rest-frame frequencies over 0 < z < 4. We break the bias-intensity degeneracy by adding monopole information from FIRAS. The recovered CIB spectrum reveals a dust temperature distribution that is broad, spanning the full range of host environments, and moderately evolving. Using low-frequency CIB amplitudes, we constrain cosmic dust density, Ω_dust, which peaks at z = 1-1.5 and declines threefold to the present. Our wide spectral and sky coverages enable a determination of the total infrared luminosity density with negligible cosmic variance across 90% of cosmic time. This yields a more precise yet consistent constraint on the cosmic star formation history compared to the Madau & Dickinson (2014) compilation. Additionally, we find that star formation occurs in a mode that is, on average, 80% dust-obscured at z = 0 and 60% at z = 4. Our results, based on intensity mapping, are complete, requiring no extrapolation to faint galaxies or low-surface-brightness components. We release our tomographic CIB spectrum and redshift distributions in this link as a public resource for future studies of the CIB, both as a cosmological matter tracer and CMB foreground.

Primary Theme Past feedback processes to present-day observations
Secondary Theme Hot gas to cold gas
Presenter's Name Yi-Kuan Chiang
Presenter's Email Address [email protected]
Recording Permission YES
Virtual Audience Permission YES
Photography Permission YES
If your talk is not accepted for a contributed talk, would you be interested in presenting a fireslide/lightning talk? No
If your fireslide/lighting talk is not accepted, would you be interested in presenting a poster? No

Author

Dr Yi-Kuan Chiang (ASIAA)

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