What are the galaxies contributing to the Cosmic Infrared Background ?

Abstract

Recent optical observations have led to a significant progress in our understanding of galaxy formation and evolution. However, our view on the deep universe is currently limited to the starlight which directly escapes from high-redshift galaxies, since we so far ignore the fraction of luminosity absorbed by dust and released in the IR/submm wavelength range. A new constraint is set by the possible detection of the Cosmic Infrared Background. We briefly review the observations and use a semi-analytic model of galaxy formation and evolution to predict number counts consistent with the level of the background. It turns out that the predictions fairly accomodate preliminary data at 175 and 850 microns. This suggests that a significant fraction of star/galaxy formation at high z is hidden by dust.

6 pages, Latex, 4 postscript figures, to appear in `The Young Universe: Galaxy Formation and Evolution at Intermediate and High Redshift'', 1998, S. D'Odorico, A. Fontana & E. Giallongo (editors), PASP