arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to G. Lagache.
This paper proposes a short review on our knowledge on the dust emission in the diffuse sky from far-IR to the mm wavelength. The current understanding is based mainly on the analysis of the COBE data combined with several templates of gas tracers (HI and Halpha). In the millimeter, emphasis is given to the new WMAP results on the so-called ``anomalous microwave emission''.
We present the first determination of the Galactic polarized emission at 353 GHz by Archeops. The data were taken during the Arctic night of February 7, 2002 after the balloon--borne instrument was launched by CNES from the Swedish Esrange base near Kiruna. In addition to the 143 GHz and 217 GHz frequency bands dedicated to CMB studies, Archeops had one 545 GHz and six 353 GHz bolometers mounted in three polarization sensitive pairs that were used for Galactic foreground studies. We present maps of the I, Q, U Stokes parameters over 17% of the sky and with a 13 arcmin resolution at 353 GHz (850 microns). They show a significant Galactic large scale polarized emission coherent on the longitude ranges [100, 120] and [180, 200] deg. with a degree of polarization at the level of 4-5%, in agreement with expectations from starlight polarization measurements. Some regions in the Galactic plane (Gem OB1, Cassiopeia) show an even stronger degree of polarization in the range 10-20%. Those findings provide strong evidence for a powerful grain alignment mechanism throughout the interstellar medium and a coherent magnetic field coplanar to the Galactic plane. This magnetic field pervades even some dense clouds. Extrapolated to high Galactic latitude, these results indicate that interstellar dust polarized emission is the major foreground for PLANCK-HFI CMB polarization measurement.
We present a new study of the high latitude galactic contributions to the millimeter sky, based on an analysis of the WMAP data combined with several templates of dust emission (DIRBE/COBE and FIRAS/COBE) and gas tracers (HI and Halpha). To study the IR to millimeter properties of the diffuse sky at high galactic latitude, we concentrate on the emission correlated with the HI gas. We compute the emission spectrum of the dust/free-free/synchrotron components associated with HI gas from low to large column densities. A significant residual WMAP emission over the free-free, synchrotron and the dust contribution is found from 3.2 to 9.1 mm. We show that this residual WMAP emission (normalised to 10$^{20}$ atoms/cm$^2$) (1) exhibits a constant spectrum from 3.2 to 9.1 mm and (2) significantly decreases in amplitude when N$_{HI}$ increases, contrary to the HI-normalised far-infrared emission which stays rather constant. It is thus very likely that the residual WMAP emission is not associated with the Large Grain dust component. The decrease in amplitude with increasing opacity ressembles in fact to the decrease of the transiently heated dust grain emission observed in dense interstellar clouds. This is supported by an observed decrease of the HI-normalised 60 microns emission with HI column densities. Although this result should be interpreted with care due to zodiacal residual contamination at 60 microns, it suggests that the WMAP excess emission is associated with the small transiently heated dust particles. On the possible models of this so-called ``anomalous microwave emission'' linked to the small dust particles are the spinning dust and the excess millimeter emission of the small grains, due to the cold temperatures they can reach between two successive impacts with photons.
We present results from JCMT sub-mm observations of sources selected from the {\sl ISO} FIRBACK (Far-IR BACKground) survey, along with UKIRT near-IR imaging of a sub-sample. This gives valuable insight into the brightest $\sim$10% of galaxies which contribute to the Cosmic Infrared Background (CIB). We estimate the photometric redshifts and luminosities of these sources by fitting their Spectral Energy Distributions (SEDs). The data appear to show a bimodal galaxy distribution, with normal star-forming galaxies at $z\simeq0$, and a much more luminous population at $z\sim0.4$--0.9. These are similar to the ultraluminous infrared galaxies which are found to evolve rapidly with redshift in other surveys. The detectability threshold of FIRBACK biases the sample away from much higher redshift ($z\stackrel{>}{_{\sim}}1.5$) objects. Nevertheless, the handful of $z\sim0.5$ sources which we identify are likely to be the low-$z$ counterparts of the typically higher-$z$ sources found in blank field sub-mm observations. This sub-sample, being much more nearby than the average SCUBA galaxies, has the virtue of being relatively easy to study in the optical. Hence their detailed investigation could help elucidate the nature of the sub-mm bright galaxies.
We analyze the cosmological constraints that Archeops places on adiabatic cold dark matter models with passive power-law initial fluctuations. Because its angular power spectrum has small bins in l and large l coverage down to COBE scales, Archeops provides a precise determination of the first acoustic peak in terms of position at multipole l_peak=220 +- 6, height and width. An analysis of Archeops data in combination with other CMB datasets constrains the baryon content of the Universe, Omega(b)h^2 = 0.022 (+0.003,-0.004), compatible with Big-Bang nucleosynthesis and with a similar accuracy. Using cosmological priors obtainedfrom recent non-CMB data leads to yet tighter constraints on the total density, e.g. Omega(tot)=1.00 (+0.03,-0.02) using the HST determination of the Hubble constant. An excellent absolute calibration consistency is found between Archeops and other CMB experiments, as well as with the previously quoted best fit model.The spectral index n is measured to be 1.04 (+0.10,-0.12) when the optical depth to reionization, tau, is allowed to vary as a free parameter, and 0.96 (+0.03,-0.04) when tau is fixed to zero, both in good agreement with inflation.
We present a determination by the Archeops experiment of the angular power spectrum of the cosmic microwave background anisotropy in 16 bins over the multipole range l=15-350. Archeops was conceived as a precursor of the Planck HFI instrument by using the same optical design and the same technology for the detectors and their cooling. Archeops is a balloon-borne instrument consisting of a 1.5 m aperture diameter telescope and an array of 21 photometers maintained at ~100 mK that are operating in 4 frequency bands centered at 143, 217, 353 and 545 GHz. The data were taken during the Arctic night of February 7, 2002 after the instrument was launched by CNES from Esrange base (Sweden). The entire data cover ~ 30% of the sky.This first analysis was obtained with a small subset of the dataset using the most sensitive photometer in each CMB band (143 and 217 GHz) and 12.6% of the sky at galactic latitudes above 30 degrees where the foreground contamination is measured to be negligible. The large sky coverage and medium resolution (better than 15 arcminutes) provide for the first time a high signal-to-noise ratio determination of the power spectrum over angular scales that include both the first acoustic peak and scales probed by COBE/DMR. With a binning of Delta(l)=7 to 25 the error bars are dominated by sample variance for l below 200. A companion paper details the cosmological implications.
We make predictions for the cosmological surveys to be conducted by MIPS/SIRTF at 24, 70 and 160 microns, for the GTO and the legacy programs, using the latest knowledge of the instrument. In addition to detector and cirrus confusion noise, we discuss in detail the derivation of the confusion noise due to extragalactic sources, that depends strongly on the shape of the source counts at a given wavelength and on the telescope and detector pixel sizes. We show that it is wise in general to compare the classical photometric criterion and the so called source density criterion to predict the confusion levels. We obtain, using the model of Lagache, Dole, & Puget (2002) limiting fluxes of 50 microJy, 3.2 mJy and 36 mJy at 24, 70 and 160 microns (resp.). We compute the redshift distributions of the detected sources at each wavelength, and show that they extend up to z ~ 2.7 at 24 microns and up to z ~ 2.5 at 70 and 160 microns, leading to resolve at most 69, 54 and 24% of the Cosmic Infrared Background (CIB) at 24, 70 and 160 microns (resp.). We estimate which galaxy populations will be used to derive the luminosity function evolution with redshift. We also give the redshift distributions of the unresolved sources in the FIR range, that dominates the fluctuations of the CIB, and a predicted power spectrum showing the feasibility of fluctuations (due to Poissonian & clustered source distributions) measurements. The main conclusion is that MIPS (and SIRTF in general) cosmological surveys will greatly improve our understanding of galaxy evolution by giving data with unprecedented accuracy in the mid and far infrared range.
To characterise the cosmological evolution of the sources contributing to the infrared extragalactic background, we have developped a phenomenological model that constrains in a simple way the galaxy luminosity function evolution with the redshift, and fits all the existing source counts and redshift distributions, Cosmic Infrared Background intensity and fluctuations observations, from the mid-infrared to the submillimetre range. The model is based on template spectra of starburst and normal galaxies, and on the local infrared luminosity function. Although the Cosmic Infrared Background can be modeled with very different luminosity functions as long as the radiation production with redshift is the right one, the number counts, and the anisotropies of the unresolved background, imply that the luminosity function must change dramatically with redshift, with a rapid evolution of the high-luminosity sources (L>3 10^{11} L_{\odot}) from z=0 to z=1 which then stay rather constant up to redshift 5. The derived evolution of the IR luminosity function may be linked to a bimodal star formation process, one associated with the quiescent and passive phase of the galaxy evolution and one associated with the starburst phase, trigerred by merging and interactions. The latter dominates the infrared and submillimetre ouput energy of the Universe. The model is intended as a convenient tool to plan further observations, as illustrated through predictions for Herschel, Planck and ALMA observations. Our model predictions for given wavelengths, together with some usefull routines, are available for general use.
Based on a power spectrum analysis of the IRAS ISSA maps, we present the first detection of the Cosmic far-Infrared Background (CIB) fluctuations at 60 and 100 microns. The power spectrum of 12 low cirrus emission regions is characterized by a power excess at spatial frequencies higher than k~0.02 arcmin^{-1}. Most of this excess is due to noise and to nearby point sources with a flux stronger than 1 Jy. But we show that when these contributions are carefully removed, there is still a power excess that is the signature of the CIB fluctuations. The power spectrum of the CIB at 60 and 100 microns is compatible with a Poissonian distribution, at spatial frequencies between 0.025 and 0.2 arcmin^{-1}. The fluctuation level is ~1.6x10^3 Jy^2/sr and ~5.8x10^3 Jy^2/sr at 60 and 100 microns respectively. The levels of the fluctuations are used in a larger framework, with other observationnal data, to constrain the evolution of IR galaxies (Lagache et al. 2002). The detections reported here, coupled with the level of the fluctuations at 170 microns, give strong constraints on the evolution of the IR luminosity function. The combined results at 60, 100 and 170 microns for the CIB and its fluctuations allows, on the CIB at 60 microns, to put a firm upper limit of 0.27 MJy/sr and to give an estimate of 0.18 MJy/sr.
We present Keck spectroscopy and UKIRT near-IR imaging observations of two 170micron-selected sources from the ISO-FIRBACK survey which have faint counterparts in the optical, and r-K~5. Both sources were expected to lie at z>1 based on their far-infrared, submillimeter and radio fluxes, assuming a similar spectral energy distribution to the local ultra-luminous infrared galaxy (ULIRG) Arp220. However, our spectroscopy indicates that the redshifts of these galaxies are z<1: z=0.91 for FN1-64 and z=0.45 for FN1-40. While the bolometric luminosities of both galaxies are similar to Arp220, it appears that the dust emission in these systems has a characteristic temperature of 30K much cooler than the ~50K seen in Arp220. Neither optical spectrum shows evidence of AGN activity. If these galaxies are characteristic of the optically faint FIRBACK population, then evolutionary models of the far-infrared background must include a substantial population of cold, luminous galaxies. These galaxies provide an important intermediate comparison between the local luminous IR galaxies, and the high redshift submillimeter-selected galaxies, for which there is very little information available.
This paper discusses the Cosmic Background (CB) dipoles observations in the framework of the Planck mission. Dipoles observations can be used in three ways: (i) It gives a measurement of the peculiar velocity of our Galaxy which is an important observation in large scale structures formation model. (ii) Measuring the dipole can give unprecedent information on the monopole (that can be in some cases hard to obtain due to large foreground contaminations). (iii) The dipole can be an ideal absolute calibrator, easily detectable in cosmological experiments. Following the last two objectives, the main goal of the work presented here is twofold. First, we study the accuracy of the Planck-HFI calibration using the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) dipole measured by COBE as well as the Earth orbital motion dipole. We show that we can reach for HFI, a relative calibration between rings of about 1% and an absolute calibration better than 0.4% for the CMB channels (in the end, the absolute calibration will be limited by the uncertainties on the CMB temperature). We also show that Planck will be able to measure the CMB dipole direction at better than 1.7 arcmin and improve on the amplitude. Second, we investigate the detection of the Cosmic Far-Infrared Background (FIRB) dipole. Measuring this dipole could give a new and independent determination of the FIRB for which a direct determination is quite difficult due to Galactic dust emission contamination. We show that such a detection would require a Galactic dust emission removal at better than 1%, which will be very hard to achieve.
We present an extinction map of the Polaris molecular cirrus cloud derived from star counts and compare it with the Schlegel et al. (1998) extinction map derived from the far--infrared dust opacity. We find that, within the Polaris cloud, the Schlegel et al. Av values are a factor 2 to 3 higher than the star count values. We propose that this discrepancy results from a difference in $τ_{FIR}/ A_V$ between the diffuse atomic medium and the Polaris cloud. We use the difference in spectral energy distribution, warm for the diffuse atomic medium, cold for the Polaris cloud, to separate their respective contribution to the line of sight integrated infrared emission and find that the $τ_{FIR}/ A_V$ of cold dust in Polaris is on average 4 times higher than the Schlegel et al. value for dust in atomic cirrus. This change in dust property could be interpreted by a growth of fluffy particles within low opacity molecular cirrus clouds such as Polaris. Our work suggests that variations in dust emissivity must be taken into account to estimate Av from dust emission wherever cold infrared emission is present (i.e. molecular clouds).
Very high energy gamma-ray data obtained by CAT and HEGRA from active galactic nucleus Mkn 501 are used to constrain the cosmic Mid-Infrared background. While the entire infrared and submillimeter spectrum shape based on models has been fixed and the density scaled as a whole in previous studies, recent measures on the low and high energy infrared background are extensively used in this paper. In this original approach, the infrared distribution is only varied in the unexplored 3.5-100 microns region. With conservative hypothesis on the intrinsic spectra of Mkn 501, an upper limit of 4.7 nW.m-2.sr-1 between 5 and 15 microns is derived, which is very close to the lower limit inferred from deep ISOCAM cosmological surveys at 15 microns. This result is shown to be independent of the exact density of the lambda < 3.5 microns and lambda > 100 microns infrared distribution within the uncertainties of the measurements. Moreover, the study presented here rules out a complete extragalactic origin for the 60 microns excess found by Finkbeiner et al. (2000).
We present the results of the first extensive mid-infrared (IR) imaging survey of the rho Ophiuchi embedded cluster, performed with the ISOCAM camera on board the ISO satellite. The main molecular cloud L1688, as well as L1689N and L1689S, have been completely surveyed for point sources at 6.7 and 14.3 micron. A total of 425 sources are detected including 16 Class I, 123 Class II, and 77 Class III young stellar objects (YSOs). Essentially all of the mid-IR sources coincide with near-IR sources, but a large proportion of them are recognized for the first time as YSOs. Our dual-wavelength survey allows us to identify essentially all the YSOs with IR excess in the embedded cluster down to Fnu ~ 10 - 15 mJy. It more than doubles the known population of Class II YSOs and represents the most complete census to date of newly formed stars in the rho Ophiuchi central region. The stellar luminosity function of the complete sample of Class II YSOs is derived with a good accuracy down to L= 0.03 Lsun. A modeling of this lumino- sity function, using available pre-main sequence tracks and plausible star for- mation histories, allows us to derive the mass distribution of the Class II YSOs which arguably reflects the IMF of the embedded cluster. We estimate that the IMF in rho Ophiuchi is well described by a two-component power law with a low- mass index of -0.35+/-0.25, a high-mass index of -1.7 (to be compared with the Salpeter value of -1.35), and a break occurring at M = 0.55+/-0.25 Msun. This IMF is flat with no evidence for a low-mass cutoff down to at least 0.06 Msun.
The Cosmic Background due to the integrated radiation from galaxies over the whole life of the Universe is reviewed. We find that this background is well constrained by measurements. The total power in the background is in the range 60-93 nW/m2/sr. The data show the existence of a minimum separating the direct stellar radiation from the infrared part due to radiation reemitted by dust. This reemitted dust radiation is about 1-2.6 time the background power in the optical/near-IR thus much larger than the same ratio measured locally (30%). The far-infrared and submillimeter background is likely to be dominated by redshifted infrared galaxies. The long wavelength spectrum of the background being significantly flatter than the spectrum of these galaxies it strongly constrains the far-infrared radiation production rate history which must increase by a factor larger than 10 between the present time and a redshift 1 and then stays rather constant at higher redshift, contrary to the ultraviolet radiation production rate which decreases rapidly. Several models of galaxy evolution have been proposed to explain the submillimeter background. In this paper we do not propose a new model; we systematically explore the allowed range of evolution histories allowed by the data. If infrared galaxies are mostly powered by starbursts as indicated by recent observations, this infrared production history reflects the history of starbursts in the Universe.
A Cosmic Far-InfraRed Background (CFIRB) has long been predicted that would traces the intial phases of galaxy formation. It has been first detected by Puget et al.(1996) using COBE data and has been later confirmed by several recent studies (Fixsen et al. 1998, Hauser et al. 1998, Lagache et al. 1999). We will present a new determination of the CFIRB that uses for the first time, in addition to COBE data, two independent gas tracers: the HI survey of Leiden/Dwingeloo (hartmann, 1998) and the WHAM H$_α$ survey (Reynolds et al 1998). We will see that the CFIRB above 100 micron is now very well constrained. The next step is to see if we can detect its fluctuations. To search for the CFIRB fluctuations, we have used the FIRBACK observations. FIRBACK is a deep cosmological survey conducted at 170 micron with ISOPHOT (Dole et al., 2000). We show that the emission of unresolved extra-galactic sources clearly dominates, at arcminute scales, the background fluctuations in the lowest galactic emission regions. This is the first detection of the CFIRB fluctuations.
We have used the WHAM H_alpha survey and Leiden/Dwingeloo HI data to decompose the Far-infrared emission (from 100 to 1000 micron) at high Galactic latitude into components associated with the Warm Ionised Medium (WIM) and the Warm Neutral Medium (WNM). This decomposition is possible for the first time thanks to preliminary WHAM data that cover a significant fraction of the sky (about 10%). We confirm the first detection of dust emission from the WIM (Lagache et al. 1999) and show that the WIM dust temperature and emissivity are very similar to those in the WNM. The analysis suggests moreover that about 25% of the far-IR dust emission at high galactic latitude is uncorrelated with the HI gas. The decomposition again reveals a Cosmic Far-Infrared Background (CFIRB) which is determined for the first time from 100 to 1000 micron using two independant gas tracers.
We have used the Marano1 field observations with ISOPHOT at 170 $μ$m to search for the Cosmic Far-InfraRed Background fluctuations. This field is part of the FIRBACK project (Puget et al., 1999a). For the first time, fluctuations due to unresolved extra-Galactic sources are isolated. The emission of such sources clearly dominates, at arcminute scales, the background fluctuations in the lowest Galactic emission regions. The study presented here is based on a power spectrum analysis which allow to statistically separate each of the background components. With this analysis, we clearly show that we detect the CFIRB fluctuations.