The star formation history in the last 10 billion years from CIB cross-correlations

Understand

The Cosmic Infrared Background (CIB) traces the emission of star-forming galaxies throughout all cosmic epochs.

• Breaking down the contribution from galaxies at different redshifts to the observed CIB maps would allow us to probe the history of star formation.
• In this paper, we cross-correlate maps of the CIB with galaxy samples covering the range $z\lesssim2$ to measure the bias-weighted star-formation rate (SFR) density $\langle b\rho_{\rm SFR}\rangle$ as a function of time in a model independent way.
• This quantity is complementary to direct measurements of the SFR density $\rho_{\rm SFR}$, giving a higher weight to more massive haloes, and thus provides additional information to constrain the physical properties of star formation.