1301.6373 (V. A. Bruce et al.)

The Morphologies of Massive Galaxies at 1 < z < 3 in the CANDELS-UDS Field    [PDF]

V. A. Bruce, J. S. Dunlop, M. Cirasuolo, R. J. McLure, T. A. Targett, E. F. Bell, D. J. Croton, A. Dekel, S. M. Faber, H. C. Ferguson, N. A. Grogin, D. D. Kocevski, A. M. Koekemoer, D. C. Koo, K. Lai, J. M. Lotz, E. J. McGrath, J. A. Newman, A. van der Wel

We have used high-resolution, HST WFC3/IR, near-infrared imaging to conduct a detailed bulge-disk decomposition of the morphologies of ~200 of the most massive (M_star > 10^11 M_solar) galaxies at 12 they are mostly disk-dominated. Interestingly, we find that while most of the quiescent galaxies are bulge-dominated, a significant fraction (25-40%) of the most quiescent galaxies, have disk-dominated morphologies. Thus, our results suggest that the physical mechanisms which quench star-formation activity are not simply connected to those responsible for the morphological transformation of massive galaxies.

View original: http://arxiv.org/abs/1301.6373