Extragalactic background light (EBL) anisotropy traces variations in the total production of photons over cosmic history, and may contain faint, extended components missed in galaxy point source surveys. Infrared EBL fluctuations have been attributed
to primordial galaxies and black holes at the epoch of reionization (EOR), or alternately, intra-halo light (IHL) from stars tidally stripped from their parent galaxies at low redshift. We report new EBL anisotropy measurements from a specialized sounding rocket experiment at 1.1 and 1.6 micrometers. The observed fluctuations exceed the amplitude from known galaxy populations, are inconsistent with EOR galaxies and black holes, and are largely explained by IHL emission. The measured fluctuations are associated with an EBL intensity that is comparable to the background from known galaxies measured through number counts, and therefore a substantial contribution to the energy contained in photons in the cosmos.
Ultraviolet emission from the first generation of stars in the Universe ionized the intergalactic medium in a process which was completed by z~6; the wavelength of these photons has been redshifted by (1+z) into the near infrared today and can be mea
sured using instruments situated above the Earths atmosphere. First flying in February 2009, the Cosmic Infrared Background Experiment (CIBER) comprises four instruments housed in a single reusable sounding rocket borne payload. CIBER will measure spatial anisotropies in the extragalactic IR background caused by cosmological structure from the epoch of reionization using two broadband imaging instruments, make a detailed characterization of the spectral shape of the IR background using a low resolution spectrometer, and measure the absolute brightness of the Zodical light foreground with a high resolution spectrometer in each of our six science fields. This paper presents the scientific motivation for CIBER and details of its first two flights, including a review of the published scientific results from the first flight and an outlook for future reionization science with CIBER data.
