Scaling Relations of Star-Forming Regions: from kpc-size clumps to HII
  regions
  We present the properties of 8 star-forming regions, or 'clumps,' in 3
galaxies at z~1.3 from the WiggleZ Dark Energy Survey, which are resolved with
the OSIRIS integral field spectrograph. Within turbulent discs, \sigma~90 km/s,
clumps are measured with average sizes of 1.5 kpc and average Jeans masses of
4.2 x 10^9 \Msolar, in total accounting for 20-30 per cent of the stellar mass
of the discs. These findings lend observational support to models that predict
larger clumps will form as a result of higher disc velocity dispersions
driven-up by cosmological gas accretion. As a consequence of the changes in
global environment, it may be predicted that star-forming regions at high
redshift should not resemble star-forming regions locally. Yet despite the
increased sizes and dispersions, clumps and HII regions are found to follow
tight scaling relations over the range z=0-2 for size, velocity dispersion,
luminosity, and mass when comparing >2000 HII regions locally and 30 clumps at
z>1 (\sigma \propto r^{0.42+/-0.03}, L(H\alpha) \propto r^{2.72+/-0.04},
L(H\alpha) \propto \sigma^{4.18+/-0.21}, and L(H\alpha) \propto
M_{Jeans}^{1.24+/-0.05}). We discuss these results in the context of the
existing simulations of clump formation and evolution, with an emphasis on the
processes that drive-up the turbulent motions in the interstellar medium. Our
results indicate that while the turbulence of discs may have important
implications for the size and luminosity of regions which form within them, the
same processes govern their formation from high redshift to the current epoch.
