Title:

	The Theory of Starbursts



Mike Dopita
Australian National University



Abstract:

Star -forming regions in galaxies consist of a number of
components, the evolving young stellar clusters with their
associated HII regions, isolated OB stars embedded in
compact HII regions, older, non-ionizing stars, and the
pre-existing old stellar populations. All of these are
surrounded by a complex, turbulent and fractal screen of gas
and obscuring dust. An understanding of the observations of
starburst galaxies across the spectral domain and throughout
time can therefore only be obtained through an understanding
of how HII regions evolve in their surrounding ISM.

I will describe how self-consistent dynamical modelling
enables us to understand the size, excitation and luminosity
distributions of HII regions in galaxies, and how radiative
transfer modelling of these various components is leading to
synthetic pan-spectral energy distributions ranging from the
Lyman Limit up to mm wavelengths.  These models provide
excellent fits to real objects, and furnish the diagnostic
tool needed to derive the fundamental parameters of
star-forming galaxies in both the local and distant
universe.