2006/03/31 by Kentaro Nagamine, Jeremiah P. Ostriker, M. Fukugita +2 · 5 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysics and Star Formation Studies #Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena #Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1086/508765
published as Astrophys.J.653:881-893,2006 · 40 page, 10 figures. ApJ in press. Matched to the accepted version
arxiv created 2006/08/28 · openalex publication_date 2006/12/13 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30
Taking three independent approaches, we investigate the simultaneous constraints set on the cosmic star formation history from various observations, including stellar mass density and extragalactic background light (EBL). We compare results based on: (1) direct observations of past light-cone, (2) a model using local fossil evidence constrained by SDSS observations at z ~ 0 (the "Fossil" model), and (3) theoretical ab initio models from three calculations of cosmic star formation history: ( a ) new 1024 3 total variation diminishing (TVD) cosmological hydrodynamic simulation, ( b ) analytic expression of Hernquist & Springel based on cosmological smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) simulations, and ( c ) semianalytic model of Cole et al. We find good agreement among the three independent approaches up to the order of observational errors, except that all the models predict bolometric EBL of I tot ≃ 37 - 52 nW m -2 sr -1 , which is at the lower edge of the observational estimate by Hauser & Dwek. We emphasize that the Fossil model that consists of two components—spheroids and disks—when normalized to the local observations, provides a surprisingly simple but accurate description of the cosmic star formation history and other observable quantities. Our analysis suggests that the consensus global parameters at z = 0 are Ω ⋆ = 0.0023 ± 0.0004, I EBL = 43 ± 7 nW m -2 sr -1 , = × 10 -2 M ☉ yr -1 Mpc -3 , j bol = × 10 8 L ☉ Mpc -3 .