Dusty Starbursts and the Growth of Cosmic Structure

Dusty starbursts were more numerous around z~1 than today and appear to be responsible for the majority of cosmic star formation over the Hubble time. We suggest that they represent a common phase within galaxies in general which is triggered by the growth of cosmic structure. We discuss the origin of the luminosity of luminous infrared galaxies at z~1. Are these galaxies dominated by star formation or nuclear activity ? What is triggering their strong activity ? Is it triggered by external interactions or did it happen naturally within isolated galaxies ? We present HST-ACS high resolution optical images of luminous infrared galaxies at z~0.7 showing the evolution of the morphology of these galaxies as a function of infrared luminosity, or star formation rate, and discuss the effect of the environment on their activity.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, to appear in Proceeding of the "Multi-Wavelength Cosmology" Conference held in Mykonos, Greece, June 2003, ed.M. Plionis (Kluwer

The role of quasars in galaxy formation

We discuss evidence that quasars, and more generally radio jets, may have played an active role in the formation stage of galaxies by inducing star formation, i.e. through positive feedback. This mechanism first proposed in the 70's has been considered as anecdotic until now, contrary to the opposite effect that is generally put forward, the quenching of star formation in massive galaxies to explain the galaxy bimodality, downsizing and the universal black hole mass over bulge stellar mass ratio. This suggestion is based on the recent discovery of an ultra-luminous infrared galaxies, i.e. an extreme starburst, which appears to be triggered by a radio jet from the QSO HE0450-2958 at z=0.2863, together with the finding in several systems of an offset between molecular gas and quasars, which may be explained by the positive feedback effect of radio jets on their local environment.Comment: Invited talk, to appear in the Proceedings of the IAU Symposium 267, "Co-Evolution of Central Black Holes and Galaxies", B.M. Peterson, R.S. Somerville, T. Storchi-Bergmann, eds., in press (8 pages, 3 figures

The contribution of starbursts and normal galaxies to infrared luminosity functions at z < 2

We present a parameter-less approach to predict the shape of the infrared (IR) luminosity function (LF) at redshifts z < 2. It requires no tuning and relies on only three observables: (1) the redshift evolution of the stellar mass function for star-forming galaxies, (2) the evolution of the specific star formation rate (sSFR) of main-sequence galaxies, and (3) the double-Gaussian decomposition of the sSFR-distribution at fixed stellar mass into a contribution (assumed redshift- and mass-invariant) from main-sequence and starburst activity. This self-consistent and simple framework provides a powerful tool for predicting cosmological observables: observed IR LFs are successfully matched at all z < 2, suggesting a constant or only weakly redshift-dependent contribution (8-14%) of starbursts to the star formation rate density. We separate the contributions of main-sequence and starburst activity to the global IR LF at all redshifts. The luminosity threshold above which the starburst component dominates the IR LF rises from log(LIR/Lsun) = 11.4 to 12.8 over 0 < z < 2, reflecting our assumed (1+z)^2.8-evolution of sSFR in main-sequence galaxies.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures & 1 table. Accepted for publication in ApJL. Minor typos corrected in v2 following receipt of proof