MIDIS. Near-infrared rest-frame morphology of massive galaxies at $3<z<5$ in the Hubble eXtreme Deep Field

TL;DR

This study uses MIRI 5.6μm imaging to analyze the rest-frame near-infrared morphology of massive galaxies at redshifts 3 to 5, revealing their predominantly smooth, disk-like structures and a morphological transition over cosmic time.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed rest-frame near-infrared morphological analysis of massive galaxies at high redshift using MIRI imaging, highlighting their disk-like structures and evolutionary trends.

Findings

Massive galaxies at z>3 show smooth, disk-like near-infrared morphologies.

Ultraviolet structures are more irregular, indicating recent star formation.

A morphological transition occurs around z~3.75, from irregular to more regular disk structures.

Abstract

Thanks to decades of observations using the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), the structure of galaxies at redshift $z>2$ has been widely studied in the rest-frame ultraviolet regime, which traces recent star formation from young stellar populations. But, we still have little information about the spatial distribution of the older, more evolved stellar populations, constrained by the rest-frame infrared portion of the galaxies' spectral energy distribution. We present the morphological characterization of a sample of 49 massive galaxies ($\log(M_{\star}/M_{\odot})>9$) at redshift $3<z<5$. The MIRI 5.6~$\mu$m imaging allows us to characterize the rest-frame near-infrared structure of galaxies beyond cosmic noon, at higher redshifts than possible with NIRCam, tracing their older and dust-insensitive stellar populations. We derive the non-parametric morphology of galaxies and model the light distribution of galaxies with a single S\'ersic component and derive their parametric morphology. We find that at $z>3$ massive galaxies show a smooth distribution of their rest-infrared light, strongly supporting the increasing number of regular disk galaxies already in place at early epochs. On the contrary, the ultraviolet structure obtained from HST/WFC3 and JWST/NIRCam observations at $\sim1.5~\mu$m is generally more irregular, catching the most recent episodes of star formation. Importantly, we find a segregation of morphologies across cosmic time, where galaxies at redshift $z>3.75$ show later-type morphologies compared to $z\sim3$ galaxies. These findings suggest a transition phase in galaxy assembly and central mass build-up, which is already taking place at $z\sim3-4$. The combined analysis of NIRCam and MIRI imaging datasets allows us to prove that the rest-frame near-infrared morphology of massive galaxies at cosmic noon is typical of compact disk galaxies with a smooth mass distribution.