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The cosmological spectral background is received radiant power per detector area, received frequency interval and solid angle, summed over a cosmological source population. Its intensity depends on emitted spectra, their cosmic evolution, the expansion history and absorption. A finite radial comoving distance alone does not guarantee a finite background when high-redshift sources are sampled at increasingly high emitted frequencies.

Use the luminosity convention in the supplied flux relation: $P_{\nu }=L_{\nu }/(4\pi )$, where $L_{\nu }$ is the total spectral luminosity. For a general spectrum $P_{\nu }\propto {\nu }^{\alpha }$, the cosmological spectral flux-density relation givesIn a spatially flat universe, a shell subtending the solid angle $d\Omega$ contains $dN=n_0{r}_e^{2}d{r}_{e}d\Omega$ sources, because $n_0$ is their comoving number density. The cosmological spectral background intensity per unit solid angle is consequentlyThis is the cosmological background intensity from comoving emissivity specialized to identical, nonevolving sources in an Einstein-de Sitter universe. For $\alpha =1$ the integrand reduces to $(1+z{)}^{-3/2}$, or directly $d{I}_{{\nu }_0}=n_0{P}_{{\nu }_0}d{r}_e$. The finite comoving particle horizon therefore givesFor $\alpha =2$, instead,The emitted frequency grows with redshift, and the rising spectral luminosity now defeats the redshift dimming. The Einstein-de Sitter spectral-background convergence criterion is $\alpha <3/2$; equality produces a logarithmic divergence. This divergence describes the unbounded power-law, eternal-population model. A finite formation epoch, a high-frequency spectral break or absorption changes that model and can make its background finite.