Quiescent Galaxy Size and Spectroscopic Evolution: Combining HSC Imaging and Hectospec Spectroscopy

TL;DR

This study investigates how the sizes and stellar populations of intermediate-redshift quiescent galaxies evolve, revealing mass-dependent growth patterns and the roles of mergers and progenitor bias in size evolution.

Contribution

It combines HSC imaging and Hectospec spectroscopy to analyze size, mass, and age relations, providing new insights into galaxy evolution mechanisms at intermediate redshifts.

Findings

Massive galaxies (>10^{11} M_\u2212 1) grow slowly in size since z~0.6.

Lower-mass quiescent galaxies grow faster, up to 70% in size.

Size and age are anti-correlated in less massive galaxies at fixed mass.

Abstract

We explore the relations between size, stellar mass and average stellar population age (indicated by D$_n4000$ indices) for a sample of $\sim11000$ intermediate-redshift galaxies from the SHELS spectroscopic survey (Geller et al. 2014) augmented by high-resolution Subaru Telescope Hyper Suprime-Cam imaging. In the redshift interval $0.1<z<0.6$, star forming galaxies are on average larger than their quiescent counterparts. The mass-complete sample of $\sim3500$ $M_*>10^{10}\, M_\odot$ quiescent galaxies shows that the average size of a $10^{11}\, M_\odot$ quiescent galaxy increases by $\lesssim25\%$ from $z\sim0.6$ to $z\sim0.1$. This growth rate is a function of stellar mass: the most massive ($M_*>10^{11}\, M_\odot$) galaxies grow significantly more slowly in size than an order of magnitude less massive quiescent systems that grow by 70\% in the $0.1\lesssim z\lesssim0.3$ redshift interval. For $M_*<10^{11}\, M_\odot$ galaxies age and size are anti-correlated at fixed mass; more massive quiescent systems show no significant trend in size with average stellar population age. The evolution in absolute and fractional abundances of quiescent systems at intermediate redshift are also a function of galaxy stellar mass. The suite of evolutionary trends suggests that galaxies more massive than $\sim10^{11}\, M_\odot$ have mostly assembled their mass by $z\sim0.6$. Quiescent galaxies with lower stellar masses show more complex evolution that is characterized by a combination of individual quiescent galaxy size growth (through mergers) and an increase in the size of newly quenched galaxies joining the population at later times (progenitor bias). The $M_*\sim10^{10}\, M_\odot$ population grows predominantly as a result of progenitor bias. For $M_*\sim5\times10^{10}\, M_\odot$ quiescent galaxies, mergers and progenitor bias make more comparable contributions to the size growth.[abridged]