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Session 62 - Workshop on the Future of Antarctic Astrophysics - II.
Topical, Oral session, Wednesday, June 10
Presidio,
In the local universe about 40% of the energy density of galaxies emerges longward of a few microns, and recent COBE detections of the cosmic infrared background indicate that an even larger fraction of the total energy density of galaxies, integrated over the history of the universe, emerged in the infrared to submillimeter wavelength region. Thus while outstanding advances in the measurement of the history of the UV energy density of the universe out to redshifts past 3 have occurred in the last couple of years, we cannot understand the full history of star formation without detailed, deep, observations in the critical IR and submillimeter bands. I will review models for the formation and evolution of galaxies that are luminous at IR and submillimeter wavelengths, and compare them to IRAS and ISO number count data and the COBE CIB measurements, and to popular galaxy formation scenarios. I will highlight constraints on these scenarios imposed by the huge body of work available from deep optical, UV and IR studies, including the popular star formation rate history diagrams based on UV measurements, and studies of damped Lyman alpha absorbers. I will summarize the limits on the star formation rate history at z>3 allowed by the available data and the CIB and suggest avenues for observational solutions to some of the outstanding questions. One of the most exciting tools for investigating the star formation history of the z>1-2 universe will be to exploit the very strong, broad mid-infrared features (the `unidentified IR bands') which can act as powerful redshift `filters' and photometric redshift estimators.
