Color gradients & half-mass radii of 3D-HST gal.

Recent studies have indicated that the ratio between half-mass and half-light radii, r_mass_/r_light_, varies significantly as a function of stellar mass and redshift, complicating the interpretation of the ubiquitous r_light_-M_ relation. To investigate, in this study we construct the light and color profiles of ~3000 galaxies at 1<z10.25 using imcascade, a Bayesian implementation of the Multi-Gaussian Expansion (MGE) technique. 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 rmass/rlight ratios, which is correlated with variation in the color gradients. We find that the median rmass/rlight ratio evolves from 0.75 at z=2 to 0.5 at z=1, consistent with previous results. We characterize the r_mass-M_ relation, and we find that it has a shallower slope and shows less redshift evolution than the r_light-M_*_ relation. This applies both to star-forming and quiescent galaxies. We discuss some of the implications of using rmass instead of rlight, including an investigation of the size-inclination bias and a comparison to numerical simulations.

Cone search capability for table J/ApJ/945/155/table1 (Measurements of half-light radii, half-mass radii and color gradients using imcascade)

Identifier
Source https://dc.g-vo.org/rr/q/lp/custom/CDS.VizieR/J/ApJ/945/155
Related Identifier https://cdsarc.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/cat/J/ApJ/945/155
Related Identifier http://vizier.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/VizieR-2?-source=J/ApJ/945/155
Metadata Access http://dc.g-vo.org/rr/q/pmh/pubreg.xml?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=oai_b2find&identifier=ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/ApJ/945/155
Provenance
Creator Miller T.B.; van Dokkum P.; Mowla L.
Publisher CDS
Publication Year 2025
Rights https://cds.unistra.fr/vizier-org/licences_vizier.html
OpenAccess true
Contact CDS support team <cds-question(at)unistra.fr>
Representation
Resource Type Dataset; AstroObjects
Discipline Astrophysics and Astronomy; Cosmology; Galactic and extragalactic Astronomy; Natural Sciences; Observational Astronomy; Physics