The history of star formation in the universe

Abstract

Our primary means of studying how galaxies form and evolve over cosmic time is through measurements of the rate at which massive stars are born in galaxies per unit comoving volume of the universe. Only recently have the most distant, most massively star-forming galaxies in the universe even been discovered, and these discoveries are challenging the standard cosmological scenario in which galaxies form hierarchically, with low-mass objects collapsing first and then merging to form larger and larger systems over cosmic time. We now know that these incredibly luminous galaxies, which have all but vanished in the local universe, are cocooned in dust, hiding them from optical view. They can only be detected at long wavelengths where the dust reradiates the starlight that it has absorbed. In this review, I trace the spectacular progress that has been made over the last decade towards understanding the cosmic history of star formation, with a particular emphasis on the important role of dusty sources in that history.

Keywords:

• Star formation
• dust
• submillimetre galaxies
• supermassive black holes

Acknowledgements

AJB dedicates this review to the memory of Robert D. Joseph, who suggested a review on this topic and was a generous and supportive colleague at the Institute for Astronomy, University of Hawaii. This review was inspired by the talks and informal discussions with participants during the August 2015 Munich Institute for Astro- and Particle Physics programme on the ‘Star Formation History of the Universe’.

Notes

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Science Foundation [grant number AST-1313150]; the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation; the Trustees of the William F. Vilas Estate; and the Munich Institute for Astro- and Particle Physics of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft cluster of excellence ‘Origin and Structure of the Universe’.