The History of Cosmological Star Formation: Three Independent Approaches and a Critical Test Using the Extragalactic Background Light

Taking three independent approaches, we investigate the simultaneousconstraints set on the cosmic star formation history from various observations,including stellar mass density and extragalactic background light (EBL). Wecompare results based on: 1) direct observations of past light-cone, 2) a modelusing local fossil evidence constrained by SDSS observations at z~0 (the`Fossil' model), and 3) theoretical ab initio models from three calculations ofcosmic star formation history: (a) new (1024)^3 Total Variation Diminishing(TVD) cosmological hydrodynamic simulation, (b) analytic expression ofHernquist & Springel based on cosmological Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics(SPH) simulations, and (c) semi-analytic model of Cole et al. We find goodagreement among the three independent approaches up to the order ofobservational errors, except that all the models predict bolometric EBL ofI_tot ~= 37-52 nW m^-2 sr^-1, which is at the lower edge of the theobservational estimate by Hauser & Dwek. We emphasize that the Fossil modelthat consists of two components -- spheroids and disks --, when normalized tothe local observations, provides a surprisingly simple but accurate descriptionof the cosmic star formation history and other observable quantities. Ouranalysis suggests that the consensus global parameters at z=0 are: Omega_* =0.0023+-0.0004, I_EBL = 43+-7 nW m^-2 sr^-1 rho_SFR=(1.06+-0.22)e-2 Msun yr^-1Mpc^-3, j_bol = (3.1+-0.2)e8 Lsun Mpc^-3.Comment: 40 page, 10 figures. ApJ in press. Matched to the accepted versio