Extragalactic background light inferred from AEGIS galaxy SED-type fractions

Understand

The extragalactic background light (EBL) is of fundamental importance both for understanding the entire process of galaxy evolution and for gamma-ray astronomy.

• However, the overall spectrum of the EBL between 0.1 and 1000 microns has never been determined directly neither from observed luminosity functions (LFs), over a wide redshift range, nor from any multiwavelength observation of galaxy spectral energy distributions (SEDs).
• The evolving, overall spectrum of the EBL is derived here utilizing a novel method based on observations only.
• The changing fractions of quiescent galaxies, star-forming galaxies, starburst galaxies and active galactic nucleus (AGN) galaxies from redshift 0.2 to 1 are estimated, and two alternative extrapolations of SED types to higher redshifts are considered.