| Issue |
SPICA Workshop
2009
|
|
|---|---|---|
| Article Number | 03009 | |
| Number of page(s) | 4 | |
| Section | The Gas and Dust Life-Cycle | |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1051/spica/200903009 | |
| Published online | 24 December 2009 | |
Cooling Lines as Probes of the Formation and Buildup of Galaxies and Black Holes
1
Leiden Observatory, Leiden University, P.O. Box 9513, NL - 2300 RA Leiden, The Netherlands
2
Kapteyn Astronomical Institute, Groningen University, P.O. Box 800, NL - 9700 AV, Groningen, The Netherlands
We discuss the use of SPICA to study the cosmic history of star formation and accretion by supermassive black holes. The cooling lines, in particular the high-J rotational lines of CO, provide a clear-cut and unique diagnostic for separating the contributions of star formation and AGN accretion to the total infrared luminosity of active, gasrich galaxies. We briefly review existing efforts for studying high-J CO emission from galaxies at low and high redshift. We finally comment on the detectability of cooling radiation from primordial (very low metallicity) galaxies containing an accreting supermassive black hole with SPICA/SAFARI.
Key words: Galaxies: formation / Galaxies: nuclei / Missions: SPICA
© Owned by the authors, published by EDP Sciences, 2009