High Gas Surface Densities yet Low UV Attenuation in z $\sim$ 1 Disc
  Galaxies
  The gas in galaxies is both the fuel for star formation and a medium that
attenuates the light of the young stars. We study the relations between UV
attenuation, spectral slope, star formation rates, and molecular gas surface
densities in a sample of 28 z$\sim$1 and a reference sample of 32 z$\sim$0
galaxies that are detected in CO, far-infrared, and rest frame UV. The samples
are dominated by disc-like galaxies close to the main SFR--mass relation. We
find that the location of the z$\sim$1 galaxies on the IRX-$\beta$ plane is
correlated with their gas-depletion time-scale $\tau_{dep}$ and can predict
$\tau_{dep}$ with a standard deviation of 0.16 dex. We use IRX-$\beta$ to
estimate the mean total gas column densities at the locations of star formation
in the galaxies, and compare them to the mean molecular gas surface densities
as measured from CO. We confirm previous results regarding high $N_H/A_V$ in
z$\sim$1 galaxies. We estimate an increase in the gas filling factor by a
factor of 4--6 from z$\sim$0 to z$\sim$1 and a corresponding increase of factor
3--2 in the mean column densities of the star forming clouds. After accounting
for the filling factor, the z$\sim$1 and the z$\sim$0 samples exhibit similar
attenuation properties. These indicate to similar porous geometries to the
molecular clouds in star-forming disc galaxies at 0<z<1.
