Active and passive galaxies at z~2: Rest-frame optical morphologies with WFC3

TL;DR

This study uses WFC3 on HST to analyze the rest-frame optical morphologies of galaxies at z~2-3.5, revealing insights into galaxy structure, mass, and star formation during a key epoch of galaxy evolution.

Contribution

It provides new rest-frame optical morphological data at high redshift, highlighting the evolution of galaxy structures and star formation quenching around z~2.

Findings

Regular disks are present in ~25% of galaxies above 10^10 Msun at 1.5<z<2.15.

Diffuse and irregular morphologies dominate at 2.25<z<3.5, especially in high-mass galaxies.

By z~2, a significant fraction of massive galaxies are spheroids with declining star formation.

Abstract

We use the high angular resolution in the near-infrared of the WFC3 on HST to determine YHVz color-color selection criteria to identify and characterize 1.5<z<3.5 galaxies in the HUDF09 and ERS (GOODS-South) fields. The WFC3 NIR images reveal galaxies at these redshifts that were undetected in the rest-frame UV HUDF/GOODS images, as well as true centers and regular disks in galaxies classified as highly irregular in rest-frame UV light. Across the 1.5<z<2.15 redshift range, regular disks are unveiled in the WFC3 images of ~25% of both intermediate and high mass galaxies, i.e., above 10^10 Msun. Meanwhile, galaxies maintaining diffuse and/or irregular morphologies in the rest-frame optical light---i.e., not yet dynamically settled---at these epochs are almost entirely restricted to masses below 10^11 Msun. In contrast at 2.25 < z < 3.5 these diffuse and/or irregular structures overwhelmingly dominate the morphological mix in both the intermediate and high mass regimes, while no regular disks, and only a small fraction (25%) of smooth spheroids, are evident above 10^11 Msun. Strikingly, by 1.5 < z < 2.25 roughly 2 out of every 3 galaxies at the highest masses are spheroids. In our small sample, the fraction of star-forming galaxies at these mass scales decreases concurrently from ~60% to ~5%. If confirmed, this indicates that z~2 is the epoch of both the morphological transformation and quenching of star-formation which assemble the first substantial population of massive ellipticals.