Color gradients and half-mass radii of galaxies out to $z=2$ in the CANDELS/3D-HST fields: further evidence for important differences in the evolution of mass-weighted and light-weighted sizes

TL;DR

This study investigates the evolution of galaxy sizes by comparing half-mass and half-light radii up to redshift 2, revealing significant differences in their evolution and implications for galaxy size measurements.

Contribution

It introduces a Bayesian MGE-based method to accurately measure galaxy mass and light profiles, highlighting the importance of considering mass-weighted sizes in galaxy evolution studies.

Findings

Median r_mass/r_light ratio decreases from 0.75 at z=2 to 0.5 at z=1

r_mass-M* relation is shallower and less evolving than r_light-M*

Both star-forming and quiescent galaxies show evolving color gradients

Abstract

Recent studies have indicated that the ratio between half-mass and half-light radii, $r_{\rm mass} / r_{\rm light}$, varies significantly as a function of stellar mass and redshift, complicating the interpretation of the ubiquitous $r_{\rm light}- M_*$ relation. To investigate, in this study we construct the light and color profiles of $\sim 3000$ galaxies at $1<z<2$ with $\log\, M_*/M_\odot > 10.25$ using $\texttt{imcascade}$, a Bayesian implementation of the Multi-Gaussian expansion (MGE) technique. $\texttt{imcascade}$ flexibly represents galaxy profiles using a series of Gaussians, free of any a-priori parameterization. We find that both star-forming and quiescent galaxies have on average negative color gradients. For star forming galaxies, we find steeper gradients that evolve with redshift and correlate with dust content. Using the color gradients as a proxy for gradients in the $M/L$ ratio we measure half mass radii for our sample of galaxies. There is significant scatter in individual $r_{\rm mass} / r_{\rm light}$ ratios, which is correlated with variation in the color gradients. We find that the median $r_{\rm mass} / r_{\rm light}$ ratio evolves from 0.75 at $z=2$ to 0.5 at $z=1$, consistent with previous results. We characterize the $r_{\rm mass}- M_*$ relation and we find that it has a shallower slope and shows less redshift evolution than the $r_{\rm light} - M_*$ relation. This applies both to star-forming and quiescent galaxies. We discuss some of the implications of using $r_{\rm mass}$ instead of $r_{\rm light}$, including an investigation of the size-inclination bias and a comparison to numerical simulations.