Annu. Rev. Astron. Astrophys. 2014. 52: Copyright © 2014 by Annual Reviews. All rights reserved

7. OUTLOOK

Productive mining of the current generation of far-infrared surveys will continue for years. Since infrared surveys are now firmly integrated into both science goals and field choice of multiwavelength surveys of galaxy evolution, their legacy value will only be strengthened as other facilities continue to expand our knowledge of the galaxy populations and survey fields under study.

Fruitful links between Herschel and the current generation of (sub)mm interferometers such as the IRAM-PdBI indicate the unique role that such interferometers and in particular ALMA will assume in the detailed characterisation of far-infrared detected galaxies and in strengthening our knowledge of their gas content, interstellar medium conditions, and kinematics.

Concerning photometric surveys, large steps in the submillimeter regime can be expected by bringing improved detector technology to large telescopes at the best ground-based sites, such as planned by the CCAT project. In space, the planned Japanese SPICA large cryogenic space telescope will for the first time provide the far-infrared spectroscopic diagnostics which for high-z galaxies were effectively out of reach of the passively cooled Herschel telescope. With fast and deep mapping in the mid-infrared and in the far-infrared out to ~ 200 μm, SPICA will also open a new regime in size and quality of SED information for galaxy evolution studies.