title: Tracing the first stars with fluctuations of the cosmic infrared background.
abstract: The deepest space- and ground-based observations find metal-enriched galaxies at cosmic times when the Universe was less than 1 Gyr old. These stellar populations had to be preceded by the metal-free first stars, known as 'population III'. Recent cosmic microwave background polarization measurements indicate that stars started forming early--when the Universe was < or =200 Myr old. It is now thought that population III stars were significantly more massive than the present metal-rich stellar populations. Although such sources will not be individually detectable by existing or planned telescopes, they would have produced significant cosmic infrared background radiation in the near-infrared, whose fluctuations reflect the conditions in the primordial density field. Here we report a measurement of diffuse flux fluctuations after removing foreground stars and galaxies. The anisotropies exceed the instrument noise and the more local foregrounds; they can be attributed to emission from population III stars, at an era dominated by these objects.
authors.affiliation: Observational Cosmology Laboratory, Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland 20771, USA. kashlinsky@stars.gsfc.nasa.gov
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Kashlinsky
authors.forename: R G
authors.initials: RG
authors.lastname: Arendt
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Mather
authors.forename: S H
authors.initials: SH
authors.lastname: Moseley