English

Structural evolution in massive galaxies at z~2

Astrophysics of Galaxies 2020-09-30 v1

Abstract

We present 0.2arcsec-resolution Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array observations at 870 μ\mum in a stellar mass-selected sample of 85 massive (Mstar>1011 MM_\mathrm{star}>10^{11}~M_\odot) star-forming galaxies (SFGs) at z=1.9-2.6 in the 3D-HST/CANDELS fields of UDS and GOODS-S. We measure the effective radius of the rest-frame far-infrared (FIR) emission for 62 massive SFGs. They are distributed over wide ranges of FIR size from Re,FIR=R_\mathrm{e,FIR}=0.4 kpc to Re,FIR=R_\mathrm{e,FIR}=6 kpc. The effective radius of the FIR emission is smaller by a factor of 2.31.0+1.9^{+1.9}_{-1.0} than the effective radius of the optical emission and by a factor of 1.91.0+1.9^{+1.9}_{-1.0} smaller than the half-mass radius. Even with taking into account potential extended components, the FIR size would change by ~10%. By combining the spatial distributions of the FIR and optical emission, we investigate how galaxies change the effective radius of the optical emission and the stellar mass within a radius of 1 kpc, M1kpcM_\mathrm{1kpc}. The compact starburst puts most of massive SFGs on the mass--size relation for quiescent galaxies (QGs) at z~2 within 300 Myr if the current star formation activity and its spatial distribution are maintained. We also find that within 300 Myr, ~38% of massive SFGs can reach the central mass of M1kpc=1010.5 MM_\mathrm{1kpc}=10^{10.5}~M_\odot, which is around the boundary between massive SFGs and QGs. These results suggest an outside-in transformation scenario in which a dense core is formed at the center of a more extended disk, likely via dissipative in-disk inflows. Synchronized observations at ALMA 870 μ\mum and JWST 3-4 μ\mum will explicitly verify this scenario.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2009.01976,
  title  = {Structural evolution in massive galaxies at z~2},
  author = {Ken-ichi Tadaki and Sirio Belli and Andreas Burkert and Avishai Dekel and Natascha M. Förster Schreiber and Reinhard Genzel and Masao Hayashi and Rodrigo Herrera-Camus and Tadayuki Kodama and Kotaro Kohno and Yusei Koyama and Minju M. Lee and Dieter Lutz and Lamiya Mowla and Erica J. Nelson and Alvio Renzini and Tomoko L. Suzuki and Linda J. Tacconi and Hannah Übler and Emily Wisnioski and Stijn Wuyts},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2009.01976},
  year   = {2020}
}

Comments

25 pages, 15 figures, 3 tables, accepted for publication in ApJ

R2 v1 2026-06-23T18:18:30.486Z