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Over 2/3 of all star formation in the Universe occurs in gas-rich, super-high pressure clumpy galaxies in the epoch of redshift z~1-3. However, because these galaxies are so distant we are limited in the information available to study the properties of star formation and gas in these systems. I will present results using a sample of extremely rare, nearby galaxies (from the DYNAMO survey and the new DUVET survey) that are very well matched in gas fraction (fgas~20-80%), kinematics (rotating disks with velocity dispersions ranging 20-100 km/s), structure (exponential disks) and morphology (clumpy star formation) to high-z main-sequence galaxies. We therefore use these galaxies as laboratories to study the processes inside galaxies in the dominate mode of star formation in the Universe. In this talk I will report on results that are aimed at testing models of star formation in galaxies. Feedback regulated star formation theories aim to explain properties like the velocity dispersion of disks, the relationship between gas and star formation and the vertical scale height of thin disks in galaxies. I will show that while these theories explain the properties in spiral galaxies, like the Milky Way, they fail to recover the kinematics and star formation in gas rich disks, and thus are not able to describe galaxies in the epoch when most stars formed. Finally, I will discuss very recent efforts to connect the regulation of gas via outflows to the picture of how galaxies maintain their star formation rates and positions in Kennicutt-Schmidt relationship. |
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