Annu. Rev. Astron. Astrophys. 2005. 43: 727-768 Copyright © 2005 by Annual Reviews. All rights reserved

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Abstract: The discovery of the Cosmic Infrared Background (CIB) in 1996, together with recent cosmological surveys from the mid-infrared to the millimeter have revolutionized our view of star formation at high redshifts. It has become clear, in the last decade, that a population of galaxies that radiate most of their power in the far-infrared (the so-called "infrared galaxies") contributes an important part of the whole galaxy build-up in the Universe. Since 1996, detailed (and often painful) investigations of the high-redshift infrared galaxies have resulted in the spectacular progress covered in this review. We outline the nature of the sources of the CIB including their star-formation rate, stellar and total mass, morphology, metallicity and clustering properties. We discuss their contribution to the stellar content of the Universe and their origin in the framework of the hierarchical growth of structures. We finally discuss open questions for a scenario of their evolution up to the present-day galaxies.

Subject headings: cosmology - evolution - luminosity function - starburst - star formation

Table of Contents

• INTRODUCTION
• DUST IN THE LOCAL UNIVERSE
• Dust Particles
• Extinction
• Local Infrared Galaxies
• THE COSMIC INFRARED BACKGROUND
• General Observations and Direct Cosmological Implications
• The Status of Deep Surveys: Resolved Fraction of the > 10 µm CIB
• Redshift Contribution to the CIB
• GALAXIES AT REDSHIFTS 0.5 z 1.5
• Detailed Properties
• Cosmic Evolution
• Towards a Scenario of Recent Bulge and Disk Formation in Intermediate-Mass Spirals
• GALAXIES AT REDSHIFTS z 1.5
• Number Counts, Contribution to the CIB
• Redshift Distribution and SEDs of the SMGs
• Nature of the SMGs
• Spitzer 24 mm Sources
• ULIRGs and Active Galactic Nuclei at High Redshifts
• CLUSTERING
• FINDING ULIRGs AT z > 3: CONFUSION
• COMPARISON OF MODELS WITH OBSERVATIONS
• CONCLUSION AND OPEN QUESTIONS
• APPENDIX: THE PHENOMENOLOGICAL MODEL OF LAGACHE ET AL. (2004)
• REFERENCES