2013/05/07 by Matthew D. Kistler, Kistler, Matthew D., Hasan Yüksel +3 · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #Astronomy and Astrophysical Research #Astrophysics and Cosmic Phenomena #Astrophysics of Galaxies (astro-ph.GA) #Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics (astro-ph.CO) #FOS: Physical sciences #Gamma-ray bursts and supernovae #High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena (astro-ph.HE)
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1305.1630
openalex publication_date 2013/05/07 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Observations of high-z galaxies and gamma-ray bursts now allow for empirical studies during reionization. However, even deep surveys see only the brightest galaxies at any epoch and must extrapolate to arbitrary lower limits to estimate the total rate of star formation. We first argue that the galaxy populations seen in LBG surveys yield a GRB rate at z > 8 that is an order of magnitude lower than observed. We find that integrating the inferred UV luminosity functions down to MUV ~ -10 brings LBG- and GRB-inferred SFR density values into agreement up to z ~ 8. GRBs, however, favor a far larger amount of as yet unseen star formation at z > 9. We suggest that the SFR density may only slowly decline out to z ~ 11, in accord with WMAP and Planck reionization results, and that GRBs may be useful in measuring the scale of this multitude of dwarf galaxies.