Ultraluminous infrared galaxies at high redshift: their position on the Madau plot and their fate

A major recent development in extragalactic astronomy has been the discovery of a population of galaxies that are luminous at submillimetre wavelengths. Estimates of their spectral energy distributions suggest that these galaxies are the high-redshift analogues of the ultraluminous infrared galaxies (ULIGs) observed locally. We identify plausible (but non-unique) redshift-dependent galaxy luminosity functions that are consistent with both source counts at 2800, 850, 450 and and 175 microns, and far-infrared background radiation intensities at 850, 240 and 140 microns. In all our models, most of the submillimetre-luminous sources are distant galaxies with high bolometric luminosities >= 10^12 L_sun. As for many local ULIGs it is not possible to determine whether these luminous galaxies are powered by starbursts, like the local galaxy Arp 220, or by active galactic nuclei (AGN), like the local galaxy Markarian 231. If the submillimetre-luminous galaxies are all starbursts, then we predict that the fraction of the cosmic star-formation rate in these objects is large, but but does not necessarily dominate the star-formation rate of the Universe at any redshift. Only a few per cent by mass of the present-epoch spheroidal stellar population would have been formed in such a population of star-forming galaxies, consistent with constraints on the number of galaxies with old stellar populations in the field at low and intermediate redshift derived from K-band surves. If the submillimetre-luminous galaxies are all powered by AGN, then the comoving density of supermassive black holes onto which material is accreting at high redshift probably equals no more than a few per cent of the local density of massive dark objects.