ProFuse: Physical Multi-Band Structural Decomposition of Galaxies and the Mass-Size-Age Plane

TL;DR

ProFuse is a new software tool that simultaneously models galaxy structures and stellar populations across multiple wavelengths, revealing detailed mass, size, age, and metallicity relationships in local galaxies.

Contribution

It introduces a self-consistent multi-band structural decomposition method that combines spectral and spatial data to analyze galaxy components in detail.

Findings

Disks show a strong co-dependency between mass, size, and age.

Younger disks tend to be larger at a given stellar mass.

Results align with high-redshift studies indicating earlier-formed disks are smaller.

Abstract

We present the new ProFuse R package, a simultaneous spectral (ultraviolet to far infrared) and spatial structural decomposition tool that produces physical models of galaxies and their components. This combines the functionality of the recently released ProFound (for automatic source extraction), ProFit (for extended source profiling) and ProSpect (for stellar population modelling) software packages. The key novelty of ProFuse is that it generates images using a self-consistent model for the star formation and metallicity history of the bulge and disk separately, and uses target images across a range of wavelengths to define the model likelihood and optimise our physical galaxy reconstruction. The first part of the paper explores the ProFuse approach in detail, and compares results to published structural and stellar population properties. The latter part of the paper applies ProFuse to 6,664 z < 0.06 GAMA galaxies. Using re-processed ugriZYJHKs imaging we extract structural and stellar population properties for bulges and disks in parallel. As well as producing true stellar mass based mass-size relationships, we further extend this correlation to explore the third dimensions of age and gas phase metallicity. The disks in particular demonstrate strong co-dependency between mass-size-age in a well defined plane, where at a given disk stellar mass younger disks tend to be larger. These findings are in broad agreement with work at higher redshift suggesting disks that formed earlier are physically smaller.