6. The cosmological evolution of radio sources

Abstract

Considerable progress has been made over the last few years in the study of the cosmologica! evolution of radio sources, both regarding the collection of deeper and higher quality observations and towards a better understanding of the physical processes that may cause the epoch dependent properties of the radio source populations on cosmological timescales. In this review it is attempted to give a fair coverage to the work of all groups that made relevant contributions to this field since 1981. A few very important papers from before 1980, that were not dealt with by the previous IAD commission, are covered as well. For more detailed reviews we refer to Katgert (1980), Kellerman (1980), van der Laan and Windhorst (1982), van der Laan et al. (1983), Longair (1978), Wall and Benn (1982), Wall (1983) and Windhorst (1984). Le latter review is a more detailed version of the current report to IAU commission 47 on Cosmology.