Luminous infrared galaxies as plausible gamma-ray sources for the gamma-ray large area space telescope and the imaging atmospheric Cerenkov telescopes

We argue that luminous infrared galaxies may constitute a newly detectable population of gamma-ray sources for the next generation of ground- and space-based high-energy telescopes. In addition, we report for the first time upper limits on their fluxes using data obtained with the EGRET telescope.