Hubble Space Telescope and Spitzer Imaging of Red and Blue Galaxies at z ~ 2.5: A Correlation between Size and Star Formation Activity from Compact Quiescent Galaxies to Extended Star-forming Galaxies

By S. Toft, P. V. van Dokkum, M. Franx, I. Labbé, N. F. Förster Schreiber, S. Wuyts, Tracy Webb, G. Rudnick, Andrew Zirm, M. Kriek and 6 more. 2007

215 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We present HST NICMOS+ACS and Spitzer IRAC+MIPS observations of 41 galaxies at 2 < z < 3.5 in the FIRES MS 1054 field with red and blue rest-frame optical colors. About half of the galaxies are very compact (effective radii re < 1 kpc) at rest-frame optical wavelengths; the others are extended (1 kpc < re < 10 kpc). For reference, 1 kpc corresponds to 0.12'' at z = 2.5 in the adopted cosmology. We separate actively star-forming galaxies from quiescent galaxies by modeling their rest-frame UV-NIR SEDs. The star-forming galaxies span the full range of sizes, while the quiescent galaxies all have re < 2 kpc. In the redshift range where MIPS 24 μm imaging is a sensitive probe of reradiated dust emission (z < 2.5), the 24 μm fluxes confirm that the light of the small quiescent galaxies is dominated by old stars, rather than dust-enshrouded star formation or AGN activity. The inferred surface mass densities and velocity dispersions for the quiescent galaxies are very high compared to those in local galaxies. The galaxies follow a Kormendy relation (between surface brightness and size) with approximately the same slope as locally, but shifted to brighter surface brightnesses, consistent with a mean stellar formation redshift of zf ~ 5. This paper demonstrates a direct relation between star formation activity and size at z ~ 2.5 and the existence of a significant population of massive, extremely dense, old stellar systems without readily identifiable counterparts in the local universe.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/04decac61abb2007f90494357ad084572cd37662

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. P. Hopkins
2. L. Hernquist
3. P. V. van Dokkum
4. R. Somerville
5. R. Dav'e
6. M. Franx
7. A. Dekel
8. Thomas J. Cox

In Instrumentation

1. P. Hopkins
2. L. Hernquist
3. P. V. van Dokkum
4. M. Franx
5. R. Somerville
6. R. Dav'e
7. Thomas J. Cox
8. A. Dekel

Citations in the corpus

• THE MAJORITY OF COMPACT MASSIVE GALAXIES AT z ∼ 2 ARE DISK DOMINATED (2011, background): “…their subsequent evolution (e.g., Trujillo et al. 2004; Daddi et al. 2005; Papovich et al. 2005; Khochfar & Silk 2006; Trujillo et al. 2006b; Zirm 2007; Toft et al. 2007; van Dokkum et al. 2008; van der Wel et al. 2008; McGrath et al. 2008; Buitrago et al. 2008; Damjanov et al. 2009; van der Wel…”
• ON SIZES, KINEMATICS, M/L GRADIENTS, AND LIGHT PROFILES OF MASSIVE COMPACT GALAXIES AT z ∼ 2 (2010, background): “…observational studies find galaxies, and especially quiescent galaxies, to grow significantly in size as time progresses (e.g., Trujillo et al. 2006; Toft et al. 2007; Zirm et al. 2007; van Dokkum et al. 2008; Cimatti et al. 2008; van der Wel et al. 2008; Franx et al. 2008; Buitrago et al. 2008).”
• A mature cluster with X-ray emission at z = 2.07 (2010, background): “We note that more than half of these galaxies havere > 2 kpc and thus appear less dense than previously studied passive galaxies atz > 2 (Toft et al. 2007).”
• THE GROWTH OF MASSIVE GALAXIES SINCE z = 2 (2009, background): “This is almost certainly thecas at z= 2 (e.g., Toft et al. 2007, Brammer et al. 2009).”
• Submillimeter Galaxies at z ~ 2: Evidence for Major Mergers and Constraints on Lifetimes, IMF, and CO-H2 Conversion Factor (2008, background): “What is the relationship between these ‘‘qBzKs’’ (Daddi et al. 2004b, 2005) and ‘‘qDRGs’’ (Zirm et al. 2007; Toft et al. 2007) and the SMG population?”
• CONSTRAINTS ON THE ASSEMBLY AND DYNAMICS OF GALAXIES. II. PROPERTIES OF KILOPARSEC-SCALE CLUMPS IN REST-FRAME OPTICAL EMISSION OF z ∼ 2 STAR-FORMING GALAXIES (2011, methodology): “…optical morphologies for MD 41, consistent with the general findings for rest-UV selected samples atz∼ 2, and in contrast to those for samples selected at longer wavelengths wi typically redder rest-frame optical colors (Peter et al. 2007; Law et al. 2007; Toft et al. 2007; Cameron et al. 2010).”
• Compact high-redshift galaxies are the cores of the most massive present-day spheroids (2009, background): “…high-redshift spheroids may have significantly smaller effective radii than low-redshift analogues of the same mass (e.g. Daddi et al. 2005; Trujillo et al. 2006a, 2007; Toft et al. 2007; van Dokkum et al. 2008; Franx et al. 2008; van der Wel et al. 2008; Cimatti et al. 2008; Buitrago et al. 2008).”
• RED NUGGETS AT z ∼ 1.5: COMPACT PASSIVE GALAXIES AND THE FORMATION OF THE KORMENDY RELATION (2008, background): “…a broad range of the parent luminosity functions while the higher redshift objects (1 < z < 3), including the DRGs, the GDDS and MUNICS samples (Toft et al. 2007, Paper III, Longhetti et al. 2005), sample the high mass end of the galaxy population and thus are biased to large values in their…”
• SUPERDENSE MASSIVE GALAXIES IN THE NEARBY UNIVERSE (2009, background): “…compact in the past (a factor of ∼4 at z&1.5 than their equally massive local counteparts; Trujillo et al. 2007, Longhetti et al. 2007, Zirm et al. 2007, Toft et al. 2007, Cimatti et al. 2008, van Dokkum et al. 2008, Buitrago et al. 2008; van der Wel et al. 2008) forces us to face the question of…”
• THE COSMOLOGICAL SIZE AND VELOCITY DISPERSION EVOLUTION OF MASSIVE EARLY-TYPE GALAXIES (2011, background): “…and their effective stellar densities are at least one order of magnitude higher (Daddi et al. 2005; Trujillo et al. 2006; Longhetti et al. 2007; Toft et al. 2007; Trujillo et al. 2007; Zirm et al. 2007; Buitrago et al. 2008; van Dokkum et al. 2008; Cimatti et al. 2008; Franx et al. 2008;…”
• ON THE DEARTH OF COMPACT, MASSIVE, RED SEQUENCE GALAXIES IN THE LOCAL UNIVERSE (2009, result): “…no ongoing star formation and z & 2, these results confirm and consolidate the work of Daddi et al. (2005), Trujillo et al. (2006), Trujillo et al. (2007), Zirm et al. (2007), and Toft et al. (2007), as well as 1 < z < 2 results from, e.g., Longhetti et al. (2007) and Saracco et al. (2009), and z .”
• SUBMILLIMETER GALAXIES AS PROGENITORS OF COMPACT QUIESCENT GALAXIES (2014, background): “…population of quiescent massive galaxies with extremely compact structure exists at z ∼ 2 (Daddi et al. 2005; Toft et al. 2005; Trujillo et al. 2006; Toft et al. 2007; Franx et al. 2008; Toft et al. 2009; Williams et al. 2010; van Dokkum et al. 2010; Brammer et al. 2011; Szomoru et al. 2011;…”
• THE EVOLVING RELATIONS BETWEEN SIZE, MASS, SURFACE DENSITY, AND STAR FORMATION IN 3 × 104 GALAXIES SINCE z = 2 (2009, methodology): “At the same time, the sizes of galaxies with low sSFRs (red in the figure) are very small at high redshift, consistent with results obtained byothers on smaller samples Toft et al. (2007); van Dokkum et al. (2008); Franx et al. (2008); Toft et al. (2009).”
• MINOR MERGERS AND THE SIZE EVOLUTION OF ELLIPTICAL GALAXIES (2009, background): “The galaxies are smaller by a factor of three to five compared to present-day ellipticals at similar masses (Daddi et al. 2005; Longhetti et al. 2007; Toft et al. 2007; Trujillo et al. 2007; van Dokkum et al. 2008; Cimatti et al. 2008; Saracco et al. 2008).”
• Structure and Star Formation in Galaxies out to z = 3: Evidence for Surface Density Dependent Evolution and Upsizing (2008, methodology): “This had been noticed before by many authors (e.g., Trujillo et al. 2003, 2006a,b, Daddi et al. 2005, Toft et al. 2007, Cimatti et al. 2008, van Dokkum et al. 2008).”
• MORPHOLOGIES OF ∼190,000 GALAXIES AT z = 0–10 REVEALED WITH HST LEGACY DATA. I. SIZE EVOLUTION (2015, methodology): “3 (e.g., van der Wel et al. 2014) and z & 3− 4 Lyman break galaxies (LBGs) selected in the dropout technique (Steidel et al. 1999) (e.g., Trujillo et al. 2006; Toft et al. 2007, 2009; Dahlen et al. 2007; Grazian et al. 2012; Huang et al. 2013; McLure et al. 2013).”
• The Morphologies of Massive Galaxies at 1<z<3 in the CANDELS-UDS Field: Compact Bulges, and the Rise and Fall of Massive Disks (2012, background): “Furthermore, it appears that the largest divergence from local values arises in galaxies which exhibit very little sign of ongoing star formation (e.g. Toft et al. 2007; Kriek et al. 2009; McLure et al. 2012).”