The nebular emission of star-forming galaxies in a hierarchical universe

Galaxy surveys targeting emission lines are characterising the evolution of star-forming galaxies, but there is still little theoretical progress in modelling their physical properties. We predict nebular emission from star-forming galaxies within a cosmological galaxy formation model. Emission lines are computed by combining the semi-analytical model \sag\ with the photoionisation code \mapp. We characterise the interstellar medium (ISM) of galaxies by relating the ionisation parameter of gas in galaxies to their cold gas metallicity, obtaining a reasonable agreement with the observed \ha, \oii, \oiii\ luminosity functions, and the the BPT diagram for local star-forming galaxies. The average ionisation parameter is found to increase towards low star-formation rates and high redshifts, consistent with recent observational results. The predicted link between different emission lines and their associated star-formation rates is studied by presenting scaling relations to relate them. Our model predicts that emission line galaxies have modest clustering bias, and thus reside in dark matter haloes of masses below $M_{\rm halo} \lesssim 10^{12} {[\rm h^{-1} M_{\odot}]}$. Finally, we exploit our modelling technique to predict galaxy number counts up to $z\sim 10$ by targeting far-infrared (FIR) emission lines detectable with submillimetre facilities