Lyman Break Analogs: Constraints on the Formation of Extreme Starbursts
  at Low and High Redshift
  Lyman Break Analogs (LBAs), characterized by high far-UV luminosities and
surface brightnesses as detected by GALEX, are intensely star-forming galaxies
in the low-redshift universe ($z\sim 0.2$), with star formation rates reaching
up to 50 times that of the Milky Way. These objects present metallicities,
morphologies and other physical properties similar to higher redshift Lyman
Break Galaxies (LBGs), motivating the detailed study of LBAs as local
laboratories of this high-redshift galaxy population. We present results from
our recent integral-field spectroscopy survey of LBAs with Keck/OSIRIS, which
shows that these galaxies have the same nebular gas kinematic properties as
high-redshift LBGs. We argue that such kinematic studies alone are not an
appropriate diagnostic to rule out merger events as the trigger for the
observed starburst. Comparison between the kinematic analysis and morphological
indices from HST imaging illustrates the difficulties of properly identifying
(minor or major) merger events, with no clear correlation between the results
using either of the two methods. Artificial redshifting of our data indicates
that this problem becomes even worse at high redshift due to surface brightness
dimming and resolution loss. Whether mergers could generate the observed
kinematic properties is strongly dependent on gas fractions in these galaxies.
We present preliminary results of a CARMA survey for LBAs and discuss the
implications of the inferred molecular gas masses for formation models.
