The Cosmic Infrared Background Experiment-2: An Intensity Mapping Optimized Sounding-rocket Payload to Understand the Near-IR Extragalactic Background Light
Authors
Michael Zemcov
James J. Bock
Asantha Cooray
Shuji Matsuura
Dae-Hee Lee
Candice Fazar
Richard M. Feder
Grigory Heaton
Ryo Hashimoto
Phillip Korngut
Toshio Matsumoto
Chi H. Nguyen
Kazuma Noda
Won-Kee Park
Kei Sano
Kohji Takimoto
Toshiaki Arai
Seung-Cheol Bang
Priyadarshini Bangale
Masaki Furutani
Viktor Hristov
Yuya Kawano
Arisa Kida
Tomoya Kojima
Alicia Lanz
Chika Matsumi
Dale Mercado
Shunsuke Nakagawa
Tomoya Nakagawa
Shuta Nakahata
Ryo Ohta
Dorin Patru
Mai Shirahata
Hiroko Suzuki
Aoi Takahashi
Momoko Tamai
Serena Tramm
Kohji Tsumura
Yasuhiro Yamada
Shiang-Yu Wang
Abstract
The background light produced by emission from all sources over cosmic history is a powerful diagnostic of structure formation and evolution. At near-infrared wavelengths, this extragalactic background light (EBL) is comprised of emission from galaxies stretching all the way back to the first-light objects present during the Epoch of Reionization. The Cosmic Infrared Background Experiment 2 (CIBER-2) is a sounding-rocket experiment designed to measure both the absolute photometric brightness of the EBL over 0.5 - 2.0 microns and perform an intensity mapping measurement of EBL spatial fluctuations in six broad bands over the same wavelength range. CIBER-2 comprises a 28.5 cm, 80K telescope that images several square degrees to three separate cameras. Each camera is equipped with an HAWAII-2RG detector covered by an assembly that combines two broadband filters and a linear-variable filter, which perform the intensity mapping and absolute photometric measurements, respectively. CIBER-2 has flown three times: an engineering flight in 2021; a terminated launch in 2023; and a successful science flight in 2024. In this paper, we review the science case for the experiment; describe the factors motivating the instrument design; review the optical, mechanical, and electronic implementation of the instrument; present preflight laboratory characterization measurements; and finally assess the instrument's performance in flight.
