AAS Meeting #193 - Austin, Texas, January 1999
Session 2. Galaxy Evolution and Surveys I - Low Redshift
Display, Wednesday, January 6, 1999, 9:20am-6:30pm, Exhibit Hall 1

## [2.14] Tests of Starburst Galaxy Evolution at the North Ecliptic Pole

S. A. Rinehart (Cornell U.), M. L. N. Ashby (SAO), P. B. Hacking (Vanguard Research Inc.), J. R. Houck (Cornell U.)

We present redshifts and luminosities for 60\micron-selected galaxies in a very deep IRAS field in the North Ecliptic Pole region (NEPR) and its immediate periphery. The data set consists of redshifts and IRAS fluxes for 188 sources drawn from coadded and point-source filtered IRAS scans of the pole region with 60\micron \ flux densities bounded between 50 and 210~mJy. This represents a roughly 150% increase in the sample discussed in Ashby et al. (1996). We have compared the redshift distribution of this enlarged infrared-selected sample to a number of evolutionary model predictions. We find the data to be consistent with no evolution, modest (1 + z)-2 density evolution, or weak luminosity evolution (L \propto e2\tau (z)) (with 68.7%, 43.2%, and 54.4% likelihood of match respectively). The data rule out power-law forms of galaxy luminosity evolution (with \beta \geq 2) for 60\micron-selected galaxies having redshifts z < 0.2 at the 97% confidence level for the redshifts in this sample. The data also rule out strong density evolution (with \alpha \geq 4) at better than 90%.