Compact, bulge-dominated structures of spectroscopically confirmed quiescent galaxies at z approximate to 3

Lustig, Peter; Strazzullo, Veronica; D'Eugenio, Chiara; Daddi, Emanuele; Pannella, Maurilio; Renzini, Alvio; Cimatti, Andrea; Gobat, Raphael; Jin, Shuowen; Mohr, Joseph J. und Onodera, Masato (2021): Compact, bulge-dominated structures of spectroscopically confirmed quiescent galaxies at z approximate to 3. In: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Bd. 501, Nr. 2: S. 2659-2676

Abstract

We study structural properties of spectroscopically confirmed massive quiescent galaxies at z approximate to 3 with one of the first sizeable samples of such sources, made of ten 10.8 < log (M-star/M-circle dot) < 11.3 galaxies at 2.4 < z < 3.2 in the COSMOS field whose redshifts and quiescence are confirmed by Hubble Space Telescope (HST) grism spectroscopy. Although affected by a weak bias toward younger stellar populations, this sample is deemed to be largely representative of the majority of the most massive and thus intrinsically rarest quiescent sources at this cosmic time. We rely on targeted HST/Wide-Field Camera 3 observations and fit Sersic profiles to the galaxy surface brightness distributions at approximate to 4000- angstrom rest frame. We find typically high S ' ersic indices and axis ratios (medians approximate to 4.5 and 0.73, respectively) suggesting that, at odds with some previous results, the first massive quiescent galaxies may largely be already bulge-dominated systems. We measure compact galaxy sizes with an average of approximate to 1.4 kpc at log (M-star/M-circle dot) approximate to 11.2, in good agreement with the extrapolation at the highest masses of previous determinations of the stellar mass-size relation of quiescent galaxies, and of its redshift evolution, from photometrically selected samples at lower and similar redshifts. This work confirms the existence of a population of compact, bulge dominated, massive, quiescent sources at z approximate to 3, providing one of the first statistical estimates of their structural properties, and further constraining the early formation and evolution of the first quiescent galaxies.

• Dokumententyp: Zeitschriftenartikel
• Fakultät: Physik
• Themengebiete: 500 Naturwissenschaften und Mathematik > 530 Physik
• ISSN: 0035-8711
• Sprache: Englisch