The MOSDEF Survey: The strong agreement between H-alpha and UV-to-FIR
  star formation rates for z~2 star-forming galaxies
  We present the first direct comparison between Balmer line and panchromatic
SED-based SFRs for z~2 galaxies. For this comparison we used 17 star-forming
galaxies selected from the MOSFIRE Deep Evolution Field (MOSDEF) survey, with
$3\sigma$ detections for H$\alpha$ and at least two IR bands (Spitzer/MIPS
24$\mu$m and Herschel/PACS 100 and 160$\mu$m, and in some cases Herschel/SPIRE
250, 350, and 500$\mu$m). The galaxies have total IR (8-1000$\mu$m)
luminosities of $\sim10^{11.4}-10^{12.4}\,\textrm{L}_\odot$ and star-formation
rates (SFRs) of $\sim30-250\,\textrm{M}_\odot\,\mathrm{yr^{-1}}$. We fit the
UV-to-far-IR SEDs with flexible stellar population synthesis (FSPS) models -
which include both stellar and dust emission - and compare the inferred SFRs
with the SFR(H$\alpha$,H$\beta$) values corrected for dust attenuation using
Balmer decrements. The two SFRs agree with a scatter of 0.17 dex. Our results
imply that the Balmer decrement accurately predicts the obscuration of the
nebular lines and can be used to robustly calculate SFRs for star-forming
galaxies at z~2 with SFRs up to $\sim200\,\textrm{M}_\odot\,\mathrm{yr^{-1}}$.
We also use our data to assess SFR indicators based on modeling the
UV-to-mid-IR SEDs or by adding SFR(UV) and SFR(IR), for which the latter is
based on the mid-IR only or on the full IR SED. All these SFRs show a poorer
agreement with SFR(H$\alpha$,H$\beta$) and in some cases large systematic
biases are observed. Finally, we show that the SFR and dust attenuation derived
from the UV-to-near-IR SED alone are unbiased when assuming a delayed
exponentially declining star-formation history.
