Impact of Future Submillimeter and Millimeter Large Facilities on the Studies of Galaxy Formation and Evolution

Abstract

We investigate what we can learn about galaxy formation and evolution from the data which will be obtained by the forthcoming large submillimeter/millimeter facilities, mainly by the Atacama Submillimeter Telescope Experiment (ASTE) and the Atacama Large Millimeter Array/Large Millimeter and Submillimeter Array (ALMA/LMSA). We first calculate the source counts from 350 um to 3 mm using the empirical infrared galaxy number count model of Takeuchi et al. (2001). Based on the number counts, we evaluate the source confusion and determine the confusion limit at various wavebands as a function of the characteristic beam size. At submillimeter wavelengths, source confusion with the 10-15-m class facilities becomes severe at 0.1 to 1 mJy level, and astrometry and flux measurements will be difficult. However, we show that very a large-area survey of submillimeter sources brighter than 10-50 mJy can provide a unique constraint on infrared galaxy evolution at z = 1-2. We also find that the 5\sigma-confusion limit of the LMSA is fainter than 1 \mu Jy. The source counts at such faint flux levels give important information of the epoch of galaxy formation. We then show that multiband photometry from the infrared (by ASTRO-F) to the millimeter can be utilized as a redshift estimator. In addition, we compare the observed 1.4, 5, and 8-GHz source counts with our model counts to examine the contribution of star forming galaxies to the faint radio galaxies.