We present the H 160 morphological catalogs for the COSMOS-DASH survey, the largest area near-IR survey using HST-WFC3 to date. Utilizing the “Drift And SHift” observing technique for HST-WFC3 imaging, the COSMOS-DASH survey imaged approximately 0.5 deg2 of the UltraVISTA deep stripes (0.7 deg2, when combined with archival data). Global structural parameters are measured for 51,586 galaxies within COSMOS-DASH using GALFIT (excluding the CANDELS area) with detection using a deep multi-band HST image. We recover consistent results with those from the deeper 3D-HST morphological catalogs, finding that, in general, sizes and Sérsic indices of typical galaxies are accurate to limiting magnitudes of H 160 < 23 and H 160 < 22 ABmag, respectively. In size-mass parameter space, galaxies in COSMOS-DASH demonstrate robust morphological measurements out to z ∼ 2 and down to log ( M ⋆ / M ⊙ ) ∼ 9 . With the advantage of the larger area of COSMOS-DASH, we measure a flattening of the quiescent size-mass relation below log ( M ⋆ / M ⊙ ) ∼ 10.5 that persists out to z ∼ 2. We show that environment is not the primary driver of this flattening, at least out to z = 1.2, whereas internal physical processes may instead govern the structural evolution.
The existence of massive quiescent galaxies at high redshift seems to require rapid quenching, but it is unclear whether all quiescent galaxies have gone through this phase and what physical mechanisms are involved. To study rapid quenching, we use rest-frame colors to select 12 young quiescent galaxies at z ∼ 1.5. From spectral energy distribution fitting, we find that they all experienced intense starbursts prior to rapid quenching. We confirm this with deep Magellan/FIRE spectroscopic observations for a subset of seven galaxies. Broad emission lines are detected for two galaxies, and are most likely caused by active galactic nucleus (AGN) activity. The other five galaxies do not show any emission features, suggesting that gas has already been removed or depleted. Most of the rapidly quenched galaxies are more compact than normal quiescent galaxies, providing evidence for a central starburst in the recent past. We estimate an average transition time of 300 Myr for the rapid quenching phase. Approximately 4% of quiescent galaxies at z = 1.5 have gone through rapid quenching; this fraction increases to 23% at z = 2.2. We identify analogs in the TNG100 simulation and find that rapid quenching for these galaxies is driven by AGNs, and for half of the cases, gas-rich major mergers seem to trigger the starburst. We conclude that these young massive quiescent galaxies are not just rapidly quenched, but also rapidly formed through a major starburst. We speculate that mergers drive gas inflow toward the central regions and grow supermassive black holes, leading to rapid quenching by AGN feedback.
We present a study of spatially resolved star formation histories (SFHs) for 60 z ∼ 2.3 main-sequence, star-forming galaxies selected from the MOSDEF spectroscopic survey in the GOODS-N field, with median stellar mass log ( M ⋆ / M ⊙ ) = 9.75 and spanning the range 8.6 < log ( M ⋆ / M ⊙ ) < 11.5 . Photometry is decomposed into a central and an outer spatial component using observed z F850LP − H F160W colors. The Prospector code is used to model spectral energy distributions for the center, outskirt, and integrated galaxy using Hubble Space Telescope/ACS and WFC3, Spitzer/IRAC, and ground-based photometry, with additional constraints on gas-phase metallicity and spectroscopic redshift from MOSDEF spectroscopy. For the low-resolution bands, spatially resolved photometry is determined with an iterative approach. The reconstructed SFHs indicate that the majority of galaxies with log ( M ⋆ / M ⊙ ) < 10.5 are observed while their central regions undergo relatively recent (<100 Myr) bursts of star formation, whereas the outskirts have a smooth, quasi-steady SFH that gently increases toward the redshift of observation. The enhanced star formation activity of the central parts is broadly consistent with the idea that it is produced by highly dissipative gas compaction and accretion. The wide range of central densities and sizes observed in the sample suggests that, for the selected galaxies, such a process has started but is still far from being completed. The implication would be that selecting star-forming galaxies at cosmic noon frequently includes systems in an “evolved” evolutionary phase where the centers have recently started a burst of star formation activity that will likely initiate inside-out quenching in the next several hundred million years.
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