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Several fluctuation studies on the near-infrared extragalactic background light (EBL) find an excess power at tens of arcminute scales ($\ell\sim10^3$). Emission from the intra-halo light (IHL) has been proposed as a possible explanation for the excess signal. In this work, we investigate the emission from the integrated galaxy light (IGL) and IHL in the power spectrum of EBL fluctuations using the simulated galaxy catalog MICECAT. We find that at $\ell\sim10^3$, the one-halo clustering from satellite galaxies has comparable power to the two-halo term in the IGL power spectrum. In some previous EBL analyses, the IGL model assumed a small one-halo clustering signal, which may result in overestimating the IHL contribution to the EBL. We also investigate the dependence of the IGL$+$IHL power spectrum on the IHL distribution as a function of redshift and halo mass, and the spatial profile within the halo. Our forecast suggests that the upcoming SPHEREx deep field survey can distinguish different IHL models considered in this work with high significance. Finally, we quantify the bias in the power spectrum from the correlation of the mask and the signal, which has not been accounted for in previous analyses., 14 pages, 13 figures, accepted by ApJ

The extragalactic background light (EBL) consists of integrated light from all sources of emission throughout the history of the universe. At near-infrared wavelengths, the EBL is dominated by stellar emission across cosmic time; however, the spectral and redshift information of the emitting sources is entangled and cannot be directly measured by absolute photometry or fluctuation measurements. Cross-correlating near-infrared maps with tracers of known redshift enables EBL redshift tomography, as EBL emission will only correlate with external tracers from the same redshift. Here, we forecast the sensitivity of probing the EBL spectral energy distribution as a function of redshift by cross-correlating the upcoming near-infrared spectro-imaging survey, SPHEREx, with several current and future galaxy redshift surveys. Using a model galaxy luminosity function, we estimate the cross power spectrum clustering amplitude on large scales, and forecast that the near-infrared EBL spectrum can be detected tomographically out to $z\sim 6$. We also predict a high-significance measurement ($\sim 10^2$-$10^4\sigma$) of the small-scale cross-power spectrum out to $z\sim 10$. The amplitudes of the large-scale cross power spectra can constrain the cosmic evolution of the stellar synthesis process through both continuum and the line emission, while on the nonlinear and Poisson noise scales, the high-sensitivity measurements can probe the mean spectra associated with the tracer population across redshift., Comment: 25 pages, 13 figures, accepted by ApJ

We study the stellar halos of $0.2\lesssim z \lesssim 0.5$ galaxies with stellar masses spanning $M_*\sim 10^{10.5}$ to $10^{12}M_\odot$ (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 $\sim$30,000 Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) photometric galaxies from CIBER images in two near-infrared bands (1.1 and 1.8 $��$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 non-linear one-halo clustering in the 1.8 $��$m band, at a level consistent with numerical simulations. Our results on the galaxy profile suggest that $\sim 50\%$ of the total galaxy light budget in our galaxy sample resides in the outskirts of the galaxies at $r > 10$ kpc. We describe this extended emission as IHL and and are able to study how this fraction evolves with cosmic time. These results are new in the near-infrared wavelength at the $L_*$ mass scale, and suggest that IHL has a significant contribution to the integrated galactic light, and to the amplitude of large-scale background fluctuations., 29 pages, 17 figures, accepted by ApJ

Line intensity mapping (LIM) provides a unique and powerful means to probe cosmic structures by measuring the aggregate line emission from all galaxies across redshift. The method is complementary to conventional galaxy redshift surveys that are object-based and demand exquisite point-source sensitivity. The Tomographic Ionized-carbon Mapping Experiment (TIME) will measure the star formation rate (SFR) during cosmic reionization by observing the redshifted [CII] 158$\mu$m line ($6 \lesssim z \lesssim 9$) in the LIM regime. TIME will simultaneously study the abundance of molecular gas during the era of peak star formation by observing the rotational CO lines emitted by galaxies at $0.5 \lesssim z \lesssim 2$. We present the modeling framework that predicts the constraining power of TIME on a number of observables, including the line luminosity function, and the auto- and cross-correlation power spectra, including synergies with external galaxy tracers. Based on an optimized survey strategy and fiducial model parameters informed by existing observations, we forecast constraints on physical quantities relevant to reionization and galaxy evolution, such as the escape fraction of ionizing photons during reionization, the faint-end slope of the galaxy luminosity function at high redshift, and the cosmic molecular gas density at cosmic noon. We discuss how these constraints can advance our understanding of cosmological galaxy evolution at the two distinct cosmic epochs for TIME, starting in 2021, and how they could be improved in future phases of the experiment., Comment: 30 pages, 18 figures, accepted for publication in ApJ

Line intensity mapping (LIM) is a promising tool to efficiently probe the three-dimensional large-scale structure by mapping the aggregate emission of a spectral line from all sources that trace the matter density field. Spectral lines from different redshifts can fall in the same observed frequency and be confused, however, which is a major challenge in LIM. In this work, we develop a line de-confusion technique in map space capable of reconstructing the three-dimensional spatial distribution of line-emitting sources. If multiple spectral lines of a source population are observable in multiple frequencies, using the sparse approximation, our technique iteratively extracts sources along a given line of sight by fitting the LIM data to a set of spectral templates. We demonstrate that the technique successfully extracts sources with emission lines present at a few $\sigma$ above the noise level, taking into account uncertainties in the source modeling and presence of continuum foreground contamination and noise fluctuations. As an example, we consider a TIME/CONCERTO-like survey targeting [C II] at the epoch of reionization, and reliably reconstruct the 3D spatial distribution of the CO interlopers at $0.5\lesssim z\lesssim 1.5$. We also demonstrate a successful de-confusion for the SPHEREx mission in the near-infrared wavelengths. Potentially, the reconstructed maps can be further cross-correlated with a (galaxy) tracer population to estimate the total interloper power in the linear clustering regime. This technique is a general framework to extract the phase-space distribution of low-redshift interlopers, without the need of external information, for any line de-confusion problem., Comment: 25 pages, 22 figures, accepted by ApJ

Intensity mapping has emerged as a promising tool to probe the three-dimensional structure of the universe. The traditional approach of galaxy redshift surveys is based on individual galaxy detection, typically performed by thresholding and digitizing large-scale intensity maps. By contrast, intensity mapping uses the integrated emission from all sources in a 3D pixel (or voxel) as an analog tracer of large-scale structure. In this work, we develop a formalism to quantify the performance of both approaches when measuring large-scale structures. We compute the Fisher information of an arbitrary observable, derive the optimal estimator, and study its performance as a function of source luminosity function, survey resolution, instrument sensitivity, and other survey parameters. We identify regimes where each approach is advantageous and discuss optimal strategies for different scenarios. To determine the best strategy for any given survey, we develop a metric that is easy to compute from the source luminosity function and the survey sensitivity, and we demonstrate the application with several planned intensity mapping surveys., 21 pages, 15 figures, accepted by ApJ

Intensity mapping provides a unique means to probe the epoch of reionization (EoR), when the neutral intergalactic medium was ionized by the energetic photons emitted from the first galaxies. The [CII] 158$��$m fine-structure line is typically one of the brightest emission lines of star-forming galaxies and thus a promising tracer of the global EoR star-formation activity. However, [CII] intensity maps at $6 \lesssim z \lesssim 8$ are contaminated by interloping CO rotational line emission ($3 \leq J_{\rm upp} \leq 6$) from lower-redshift galaxies. Here we present a strategy to remove the foreground contamination in upcoming [CII] intensity mapping experiments, guided by a model of CO emission from foreground galaxies. The model is based on empirical measurements of the mean and scatter of the total infrared luminosities of galaxies at $z < 3$ and with stellar masses $M_{*} > 10^{8}\,\rm M_{\rm \odot}$ selected in $K$-band from the COSMOS/UltraVISTA survey, which can be converted to CO line strengths. For a mock field of the Tomographic Ionized-carbon Mapping Experiment (TIME), we find that masking out the "voxels" (spectral-spatial elements) containing foreground galaxies identified using an optimized CO flux threshold results in a $z$-dependent criterion $m^{\rm AB}_{\rm K} \lesssim 22$ (or $M_{*} \gtrsim 10^{9} \,\rm M_{\rm \odot}$) at $z < 1$ and makes a [CII]/CO$_{\rm tot}$ power ratio of $\gtrsim 10$ at $k=0.1$ $h$/Mpc achievable, at the cost of a moderate $\lesssim 8\%$ loss of total survey volume., 14 figures, 4 tables, re-submitted to ApJ after addressing reviewer's comments. Comments welcome

Spectral line intensity mapping has been proposed as a promising tool to efficiently probe the cosmic reionization and the large-scale structure. Without detecting individual sources, line intensity mapping makes use of all available photons and measures the integrated light in the source confusion limit, to efficiently map the three-dimensional matter distribution on large scales as traced by a given emission line. One particular challenge is the separation of desired signals from astrophysical continuum foregrounds and line interlopers. Here we present a technique to extract large-scale structure information traced by emission lines from different redshifts, embedded in a three-dimensional intensity mapping data cube. The line redshifts are distinguished by the anisotropic shape of the power spectra when projected onto a common coordinate frame. We consider the case where high-redshift [CII] lines are confused with multiple low-redshift CO rotational lines. We present a semi-analytic model for [CII] and CO line estimates based on the cosmic infrared background measurements, and show that with a modest instrumental noise level and survey geometry, the large-scale [CII] and CO power spectrum amplitudes can be successfully extracted from a confusion-limited data set, without external information. We discuss the implications and limits of this technique for possible line intensity mapping experiments., Comment: 13 pages, 14 figures, accepted by ApJ