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Submillimeter bright galaxies in the early Universe are vigorously formingstars at ~1000 times higher rate than the Milky Way. A large fraction of starsis formed in the central 1 kiloparsec region, that is comparable in size tomassive, quiescent galaxies found at the peak of the cosmic star formationhistory, and eventually the core of giant elliptical galaxies in thepresent-day Universe. However, the physical and kinematic properties inside acompact starburst core are poorly understood because dissecting it requiresangular resolution even higher than the Hubble Space Telescope can offer. Herewe report 550 parsec-resolution observations of gas and dust in the brightestunlensed submillimeter galaxy at z=4.3. We map out for the first time thespatial and kinematic structure of molecular gas inside the heavilydust-obscured core. The gas distribution is clumpy while the underlying disk isrotation-supported. Exploiting the high-quality map of molecular gas masssurface density, we find a strong evidence that the starburst disk isgravitationally unstable, implying that the self-gravity of gas overcomes thedifferential rotation and the internal pressure by stellar radiation feedback.The observed molecular gas would be consumed by star formation in a timescaleof 100 million years, that is comparable to those in merging starburstgalaxies. Our results suggest that the most extreme starburst in the earlyUniverse originates from efficient star formation due to a gravitationalinstability in the central 2 kpc region.

A gravitationally unstable gas disk of a starburst galaxy 12 billion years ago