Journal article
THE STAR FORMATION RATE IN THE REIONIZATION ERA AS INDICATED BY GAMMA-RAY BURSTS
Matthew D Kistler, Hasan Yueksel, John F Beacom, Andrew M Hopkins, J Stuart B Wyithe
ASTROPHYSICAL JOURNAL LETTERS | IOP PUBLISHING LTD | Published : 2009
Abstract
High-redshift gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) offer an extraordinary opportunity to study aspects of the early universe, including the cosmic star formation rate (SFR). Motivated by the two recent highest-z GRBs, GRB 080913 at z ≃ 6.7 and GRB 090423 at z ≃ 8.1, and more than four years of Swift observations, we first confirm that the GRB rate does not trace the SFR in an unbiased way. Correcting for this, we find that the implied SFR to beyond z = 8 is consistent with Lyman Break Galaxy-based measurements after accounting for unseen galaxies at the faint end of the UV luminosity function. We show that this provides support for the integrated star formation in the range 6 ≲ z ≲ 8 to have been alone s..
View full abstractGrants
Awarded by NSF
Awarded by DOE
Funding Acknowledgements
We thank Kris Stanek for helpful discussions and Nat Butler for making his GRB data available and suggesting peak luminosities. We acknowledge use of the Swift public archive. M. D. K. and J. F. B. were supported by NSF CAREER Grant PHY-0547102 (to J. F. B.), H. Y. by DOE Grant DE-FG02-91ER40626, and A. M. H. and J. S. B. W. by the Australian Research Council.