Evolution of the Size–Mass Relation of Star-forming Galaxies Since z = 5.5 Revealed by CEERS

Ward, Ethan; de la Vega, Alexander; Mobasher, Bahram; McGrath, Elizabeth J.; Iyer, Kartheik G.; Calabrò, Antonello; Costantin, Luca; Dickinson, Mark; Holwerda, Benne W.; Huertas-Company, Marc; Hirschmann, Michaela; Lucas, Ray A.; Pandya, Viraj; Wilkins, Stephen M.; Yung, L. Y. Aaron; Arrabal Haro, Pablo; Bagley, Micaela B.; Finkelstein, Steven L.; Kartaltepe, Jeyhan S.; Koekemoer, Anton M.; Papovich, Casey; Pirzkal, Nor
Bibliographical reference

The Astrophysical Journal

Advertised on:
2
2024
Number of authors
22
IAC number of authors
1
Citations
11
Refereed citations
1
Description
We combine deep imaging data from the CEERS early release JWST survey and Hubble Space Telescope imaging from CANDELS to examine the size–mass relation of star-forming galaxies and the morphology–quenching relation at stellar masses M ⋆ ≥ 109.5 M ⊙ over the redshift range 0.5 < z < 5.5. In this study with a sample of 2450 galaxies, we separate star-forming and quiescent galaxies based on their star formation activity and confirm that star-forming and quiescent galaxies have different morphologies out to z = 5.5, extending the results of earlier studies out to higher redshifts. We find that star-forming and quiescent galaxies have typical Sérsic indices of n ∼ 1.3 and n ∼ 4.3, respectively. Focusing on star-forming galaxies, we find that the slope of the size–mass relation is nearly constant with redshift, as was found previously, but shows a modest increase at z ∼ 4.2. The intercept in the size–mass relation declines out to z = 5.5 at rates that are similar to what earlier studies found. The intrinsic scatter in the size–mass relation is relatively constant out to z = 5.5.