Star Formation in High-Redshift Starburst Galaxies

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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.