Measuring Light from the Epoch of Reionization with CIBER, the Cosmic Infrared Background Experiment

Abstract

University of WashingtonUltraviolet emission from the first generation of stars in th e Universe ionized the intergalacticmedium in a process which was completed by z ∼ 6; the wavelength of these photons has beenredshifted by (1+z)into the near infrared today and can be measured using instruments situatedabovethe Earth’s atmosphere. First flying in February2009, the Cosmic InfraredBackgroundEx-periment (CIBER) comprises four instruments housed in a single reusable sounding rocket bornepayload. CIBER will measure spatial anisotropies in the extragalactic IR background caused bycosmological structure from the epoch of reionization using two broadband imaging instruments,make a detailed characterizationof the spectral shape of the IR backgroundusing a low resolutionspectrometer, and measure the absolute brightness of the Zodical light foregroundwith a high res-olution spectrometerin each of our six science fields. This p aperpresents the scientific motivationfor CIBER and details of its first two flights, including a revi ew of the published scientific resultsfrom the first flight and an outlook for future reionization sc ience with CIBER data.Cosmic Radiation Fields: Sources in the early UniverseNovember 9-12, 2010DESY, Germany