The Cosmic Infrared Background Experiment-2: An Intensity Mapping Optimized Sounding-rocket Payload to Understand the Near-IR Extragalactic Background Light
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.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2510.05210,
title = {The Cosmic Infrared Background Experiment-2: An Intensity Mapping Optimized Sounding-rocket Payload to Understand the Near-IR Extragalactic Background Light},
author = {Michael Zemcov and James J. Bock and Asantha Cooray and Shuji Matsuura and Dae-Hee Lee and Candice Fazar and Richard M. Feder and Grigory Heaton and Ryo Hashimoto and Phillip Korngut and Toshio Matsumoto and Chi H. Nguyen and Kazuma Noda and Won-Kee Park and Kei Sano and Kohji Takimoto and Toshiaki Arai and Seung-Cheol Bang and Priyadarshini Bangale and Masaki Furutani and Viktor Hristov and Yuya Kawano and Arisa Kida and Tomoya Kojima and Alicia Lanz and Chika Matsumi and Dale Mercado and Shunsuke Nakagawa and Tomoya Nakagawa and Shuta Nakahata and Ryo Ohta and Dorin Patru and Mai Shirahata and Hiroko Suzuki and Aoi Takahashi and Momoko Tamai and Serena Tramm and Kohji Tsumura and Yasuhiro Yamada and Shiang-Yu Wang},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2510.05210},
year = {2025}
}