| Summary: | While continuum imaging data at far-infrared to sub-millimeter wavelengths have provided tight constraints on the population properties of dusty star-forming galaxies up to high redshifts, future space missions like the Space Infra-Red Telescope for Cosmology and Astrophysics (SPICA) and ground based facilities like the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) and the Cerro Chajnantor Atacama Telescope (CCAT) will allow detailed investigations of their physical properties via their mid-/far-infrared line emission. The goal of this thesis project was to carry out predictions for these spectroscopic surveys using both a phenomenological approach and physically grounded models. These predictions are useful to optimize the planning of the surveys. In the first part of the work, I present updated predictions for the number counts and the redshift distributions of star-forming galaxies spectroscopically detectable by these future missions. These predictions exploit a recent upgrade of evolutionary models, that includes the effect of strong gravitational lensing, in the light of the most recent Herschel and South Pole Telescope (SPT) data. Moreover the relations between line and continuum infrared luminosity are re-assessed, considering also differences among source populations, with the support of extensive simulations that take into account dust obscuration. My reference model for the redshift dependent IR luminosity functions is the one worked out by Cai et al. (2013) based on a comprehensive hybrid approach combining a physical model for the progenitors of early-type galaxies with a phenomenological one for late-type galaxies. The derived line luminosity functions are found to be highly sensitive to the spread of the line to continuum luminosity ratios. Estimates of the expected numbers of detections per spectral line by the SpicA FAR infrared Instrument (SAFARI) and by CCAT surveys for different integration times per field of view at fixed total observing time are presented. Comparing with the earlier ...
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