AKARI OBSERVATION OF THE FLUCTUATION OF THE NEAR-INFRARED BACKGROUND.

We report a search for fluctuations of the sky brightness toward the north ecliptic pole with the Japanese infrared astronomical satellite AKARI, at 2.4, 3.2, and 4.1 µm. We obtained circular maps with 10' diameter fields of view, which clearly show a spatial structure on the scale of a few hundred arcseconds. A power spectrum analysis shows that there is a significant excess fluctuation at angular scales larger than 100" that cannot be explained by zodiacal light, diffuse Galactic light, shot noise of faint galaxies, or clustering of low-redshift galaxies. These results are consistent with observations at 3.6 and 4.5 µm by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. The fluctuating component observed at large angular scales has a blue stellar spectrum which is similar to that of the spectrum of the excess isotropic emission observed with the Infrared Telescope in Space. A significant spatial correlation between wavelength bands was found, and the slopes of the linear correlations are consistent with the spectrum of the excess fluctuation. These findings indicate that the detected fluctuation could be attributed to the first stars of the universe, i.e., Population III stars. The observed fluctuation provides an important constraint on the era of the first stars. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]