The Astrophysical Journal (Jan 2024)
UVCANDELS: The Role of Dust on the Stellar Mass–Size Relation of Disk Galaxies at 0.5 ≤ z ≤ 3.0
- Kalina V. Nedkova,
- Marc Rafelski,
- Harry I. Teplitz,
- Vihang Mehta,
- Laura DeGroot,
- Swara Ravindranath,
- Anahita Alavi,
- Alexander Beckett,
- Norman A. Grogin,
- Boris Häußler,
- Anton M. Koekemoer,
- Grecco A. Oyarzún,
- Laura Prichard,
- Mitchell Revalski,
- Gregory F. Snyder,
- Ben Sunnquist,
- Xin Wang,
- Rogier A. Windhorst,
- Nima Chartab,
- Christopher J. Conselice,
- Yicheng Guo,
- Nimish Hathi,
- Matthew J. Hayes,
- Zhiyuan Ji,
- Keunho J. Kim,
- Ray A. Lucas,
- Bahram Mobasher,
- Robert W. O’Connell,
- Zahra Sattari,
- Brent M. Smith,
- Sina Taamoli,
- L. Y. Aaron Yung,
- the UVCANDELS Team
Affiliations
- Kalina V. Nedkova
- ORCiD
- Department of Physics and Astronomy, Johns Hopkins University , 3400 North Charles Street, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA ; [email protected]; Space Telescope Science Institute , 3700 San Martin Drive, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA
- Marc Rafelski
- ORCiD
- Department of Physics and Astronomy, Johns Hopkins University , 3400 North Charles Street, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA ; [email protected]; Space Telescope Science Institute , 3700 San Martin Drive, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA
- Harry I. Teplitz
- ORCiD
- IPAC, Mail Code 314-6, California Institute of Technology , 1200 E. California Boulevard, Pasadena CA 91125, USA
- Vihang Mehta
- ORCiD
- IPAC, Mail Code 314-6, California Institute of Technology , 1200 E. California Boulevard, Pasadena CA 91125, USA
- Laura DeGroot
- ORCiD
- Department of Physics , The College of Wooster, 1189 Beall Avenue, Wooster, OH 44691, USA
- Swara Ravindranath
- ORCiD
- Astrophysics Science Division, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center , 8800 Greenbelt Road, Greenbelt, MD 20771, USA; Center for Research and Exploration in Space Science and Technology II, Department of Physics, Catholic University of America, 620 Michigan Avenue N.E., Washington DC 20064, USA
- Anahita Alavi
- ORCiD
- IPAC, Mail Code 314-6, California Institute of Technology , 1200 E. California Boulevard, Pasadena CA 91125, USA
- Alexander Beckett
- ORCiD
- Space Telescope Science Institute , 3700 San Martin Drive, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA
- Norman A. Grogin
- ORCiD
- Space Telescope Science Institute , 3700 San Martin Drive, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA
- Boris Häußler
- ORCiD
- European Southern Observatory, Alonso de Cordova 3107, Casilla 19001, Santiago, Chile
- Anton M. Koekemoer
- ORCiD
- Space Telescope Science Institute , 3700 San Martin Drive, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA
- Grecco A. Oyarzún
- ORCiD
- Department of Physics and Astronomy, Johns Hopkins University , 3400 North Charles Street, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA ; [email protected]
- Laura Prichard
- ORCiD
- Space Telescope Science Institute , 3700 San Martin Drive, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA
- Mitchell Revalski
- ORCiD
- Space Telescope Science Institute , 3700 San Martin Drive, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA
- Gregory F. Snyder
- ORCiD
- Space Telescope Science Institute , 3700 San Martin Drive, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA
- Ben Sunnquist
- ORCiD
- Space Telescope Science Institute , 3700 San Martin Drive, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA
- Xin Wang
- ORCiD
- School of Astronomy and Space Science, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences (UCAS) , Beijing 100049, People's Republic of China; National Astronomical Observatories, Chinese Academy of Sciences , Beijing 100101, People's Republic of China; Institute for Frontiers in Astronomy and Astrophysics, Beijing Normal University , Beijing 102206, People's Republic of China
- Rogier A. Windhorst
- ORCiD
- School of Earth & Space Exploration, Arizona State University , Tempe, AZ 85287-1404, USA
- Nima Chartab
- ORCiD
- The Observatories of the Carnegie Institution for Science , 813 Santa Barbara Street, Pasadena, CA 91101, USA
- Christopher J. Conselice
- ORCiD
- Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics, University of Manchester , Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL, UK
- Yicheng Guo
- ORCiD
- Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Missouri , Columbia, MO 65211, USA
- Nimish Hathi
- ORCiD
- Space Telescope Science Institute , 3700 San Martin Drive, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA
- Matthew J. Hayes
- ORCiD
- Stockholm University , Department of Astronomy and Oskar Klein Centre for Cosmoparticle Physics, AlbaNova University Centre, SE-10691, Stockholm, Sweden
- Zhiyuan Ji
- ORCiD
- Steward Observatory, University of Arizona , 933 N. Cherry Avenue, Tucson, AZ 85721, USA
- Keunho J. Kim
- ORCiD
- IPAC, Mail Code 314-6, California Institute of Technology , 1200 E. California Boulevard, Pasadena CA 91125, USA
- Ray A. Lucas
- ORCiD
- Space Telescope Science Institute , 3700 San Martin Drive, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA
- Bahram Mobasher
- ORCiD
- Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of California , Riverside, 900 University Avenue, Riverside, CA 92521, USA
- Robert W. O’Connell
- ORCiD
- Department of Astronomy, University of Virginia , Charlottesville, VA 22904-4325, USA
- Zahra Sattari
- ORCiD
- The Observatories of the Carnegie Institution for Science , 813 Santa Barbara Street, Pasadena, CA 91101, USA; Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of California , Riverside, 900 University Avenue, Riverside, CA 92521, USA
- Brent M. Smith
- ORCiD
- School of Earth & Space Exploration, Arizona State University , Tempe, AZ 85287-1404, USA
- Sina Taamoli
- ORCiD
- Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of California , Riverside, 900 University Avenue, Riverside, CA 92521, USA
- L. Y. Aaron Yung
- ORCiD
- Space Telescope Science Institute , 3700 San Martin Drive, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA
- the UVCANDELS Team
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/ad4ede
- Journal volume & issue
-
Vol. 970,
no. 2
p. 188
Abstract
We use the Ultraviolet Imaging of the Cosmic Assembly Near-infrared Deep Extragalactic Legacy Survey fields (UVCANDELS) to measure half-light radii in the rest-frame far-UV for ∼16,000 disk-like galaxies over 0.5 ≤ z ≤ 3. We compare these results to rest-frame optical sizes that we measure in a self-consistent way and find that the stellar mass–size relation of disk galaxies is steeper in the rest-frame UV than in the optical across our entire redshift range. We show that this is mainly driven by massive galaxies (≳10 ^10 M _⊙ ), which we find to also be among the most dusty. Our results are consistent with the literature and have commonly been interpreted as evidence of inside-out growth wherein galaxies form their central structures first. However, they could also suggest that the centers of massive galaxies are more heavily attenuated than their outskirts. We distinguish between these scenarios by modeling and selecting galaxies at z = 2 from the VELA simulation suite in a way that is consistent with UVCANDELS. We show that the effects of dust alone can account for the size differences we measure at z = 2. This indicates that, at different wavelengths, size differences and the different slopes of the stellar mass–size relation do not constitute evidence for inside-out growth.
Keywords
