The Evolution of the Star-forming Interstellar Medium across Cosmic Time

Understand

Over the past decade increasingly robust estimates of the dense molecular gas content in galaxy populations between redshift 0 and the peak of cosmic galaxy/star formation from redshift 1-3 have become available.

• This rapid progress has been possible due to the advent of powerful ground-based, and space telescopes for combined study of several millimeter to far-IR, line or continuum tracers of the molecular gas and dust components.
• The main conclusions of this review are: 1.
• Star forming galaxies contained much more molecular gas at earlier cosmic epochs than at the present time.