Ultraviolet luminosity density of the universe during the epoch of reionization.
The spatial fluctuations of the extragalactic background light trace the total emission from all stars and galaxies in the Universe. A multiwavelength study can be used to measure the integrated emission from first galaxies during reionization when the Universe was about 500 million years old. Here we report arcmin-scale spatial fluctuations in one of the deepest sky surveys with the Hubble Space Telescope in five wavebands between 0.6 and 1.6 μm. We model-fit the angular power spectra of intensity fluctuation measurements to find the ultraviolet luminosity density of galaxies at redshifts greater than 8 to be log ρ(UV) = 27.4(+0.2)(-1.2) ergs(-1) Hz(-1) Mpc(-3) (1σ). This level of integrated light emission allows for a significant surface density of fainter primeval galaxies that are below the point-source detection level in current surveys.
Department of Physics &Astronomy, University of California, Irvine, California 92697, USA.
Ketron
K
Mitchell-Wynne
Department of Physics &Astronomy, University of California, Irvine, California 92697, USA.
Asantha
A
Cooray
National Astronomical Observatories, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 20A Datun Road, Chaoyang District, Beijing 100012, China.|Department of Physics &Astronomy, University of California, Irvine, California 92697, USA.
Yan
Y
Gong
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, 60 Garden St., Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA.
Matthew
M
Ashby
Department of Astronomy, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York 14853, USA.
Timothy
T
Dolch
Space Telescope Science Institute, 3700 San Martin Dr., Baltimore, Maryland 21218, USA.
Henry
H
Ferguson
Department of Astronomy, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas 78712, USA.
Steven
S
Finkelstein
Space Telescope Science Institute, 3700 San Martin Dr., Baltimore, Maryland 21218, USA.
Norman
N
Grogin
Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky 40506, USA.
Dale
D
Kocevski
Space Telescope Science Institute, 3700 San Martin Dr., Baltimore, Maryland 21218, USA.
Anton
A
Koekemoer
Physics Department, University of California Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, California 95064, USA.
Joel
J
Primack
Theoretical Division, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico 87545, USA.
Joseph
J
Smidt