Star Formation in High-Redshift Starburst Galaxies

Abstract: I present a model for the star formation properties of z~2 starburst galaxies. Here, I discuss models for the formation of high-z Submillimeter Galaxies, as well as the CO-H2 conversion factor for these systems. I then apply these models to literature observations. I show that when using a functional form for XCO that varies smoothly with the physical properties in galaxies, galaxies at both local and high-z lie on a unimodal Kennicutt-Schmidt star formation law, with power-law index of ~2. The inferred gas fractions of these galaxies are large (fgas ~ 0.2-0.4), though a factor ~2 lower than most literature estimates that utilize locally-calibrated CO-H2 conversion factors.