Lisa KEWLEY
(Australian National University)
We combine cosmological hydrodynamic simulations with stellar population synthesis, photoionization, and shock models to predict the stromlo line evolution of ensembles of galaxies from z=3 to the present day. We compare our theoretical predictions with near-infrared spectroscopic observations of COSMOS galaxies and gravitationally lensed galaxies. We show that the star-formation and ISM conditions in star-forming galaxies changes significantly from z~3 to z~1, while galaxies at z~1 have reached star formation/ISM conditions that are similar to local galaxies. We show that ongoing and future near-infrared spectroscopic observations of COSMOS galaxies can place important constraints on the cosmic evolution of metallicity gradients in AGN.