We study the stellar halos of 0.2 ≲ $$z$$ ≲ 0.5 galaxies with stellar masses spanning $$M$$* ~ 1010.5 to 1012$$M$$⊙ (approximately $$L$$* galaxies at this redshift) using imaging data from the Cosmic Infrared Background Experiment (CIBER). A previous CIBER fluctuation analysis suggested that intra-halo light (IHL) contributes a significant portion of the near-infrared extragalactic background light (EBL), the integrated emission from all sources throughout cosmic history. In this work, we carry out a stacking analysis with a sample of ~30,000 Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) photometric galaxies from CIBER images in two near-infrared bands (1.1 and 1.8 $$μ$$m) to directly probe the IHL associated with these galaxies. We stack galaxies in five sub-samples split by brightness and detect an extended galaxy profile beyond the instrument point-spread function (PSF) derived by stacking stars. We jointly fit a model for the inherent galaxy light profile plus large-scale one- and two-halo clustering to measure the extended galaxy IHL. We detect nonlinear one-halo clustering in the 1.8 $$μ$$m band at a level consistent with numerical simulations. Furthermore, by extrapolating the fraction of extended galaxy light, we measure to all galaxy mass scales, we find ~30%/15% of the total galaxy light budget from galaxies is at radius $$r$$ > 10/20 kpc, respectively. These results are new at near-infrared wavelengths at the $$L$$* mass scale and suggest that the IHL emission and one-halo clustering could have appreciable contributions to the amplitude of large-scale EBL background fluctuations.
@article{osti_1983172,
author = {Cheng, Yun-Ting and Arai, Toshiaki and Bangale, Priyadarshini and Bock, James J. and Chang, Tzu-Ching and Cooray, Asantha and Feder, Richard M. and Korngut, Phillip M. and Lee, Dae Hee and Liu, Lunjun and others},
title = {Probing Intra-Halo Light with Galaxy Stacking in CIBER Images},
annote = {We study the stellar halos of 0.2 ≲ $z$ ≲ 0.5 galaxies with stellar masses spanning $M$* ~ 1010.5 to 1012$M$⊙ (approximately $L$* galaxies at this redshift) using imaging data from the Cosmic Infrared Background Experiment (CIBER). A previous CIBER fluctuation analysis suggested that intra-halo light (IHL) contributes a significant portion of the near-infrared extragalactic background light (EBL), the integrated emission from all sources throughout cosmic history. In this work, we carry out a stacking analysis with a sample of ~30,000 Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) photometric galaxies from CIBER images in two near-infrared bands (1.1 and 1.8 $μ$m) to directly probe the IHL associated with these galaxies. We stack galaxies in five sub-samples split by brightness and detect an extended galaxy profile beyond the instrument point-spread function (PSF) derived by stacking stars. We jointly fit a model for the inherent galaxy light profile plus large-scale one- and two-halo clustering to measure the extended galaxy IHL. We detect nonlinear one-halo clustering in the 1.8 $μ$m band at a level consistent with numerical simulations. Furthermore, by extrapolating the fraction of extended galaxy light, we measure to all galaxy mass scales, we find ~30%/15% of the total galaxy light budget from galaxies is at radius $r$ > 10/20 kpc, respectively. These results are new at near-infrared wavelengths at the $L$* mass scale and suggest that the IHL emission and one-halo clustering could have appreciable contributions to the amplitude of large-scale EBL background fluctuations.},
doi = {10.3847/1538-4357/ac0f5b},
url = {https://www.osti.gov/biblio/1983172},
journal = {The Astrophysical Journal},
issn = {ISSN 0004-637X},
number = {2},
volume = {919},
place = {United States},
publisher = {IOP Publishing},
year = {2021},
month = {09}}