The Astrophysical Journal (Jan 2024)
DESI Massive Poststarburst Galaxies at z ∼ 1.2 Have Compact Structures and Dense Cores
- Yunchong Zhang,
- David J. Setton,
- Sedona H. Price,
- Rachel Bezanson,
- Gourav Khullar,
- Jeffrey A. Newman,
- Jessica Nicole Aguilar,
- Steven Ahlen,
- Brett H. Andrews,
- David Brooks,
- Todd Claybaugh,
- Axel de la Macorra,
- Biprateep Dey,
- Peter Doel,
- Enrique Gaztañaga,
- Satya Gontcho A Gontcho,
- Jenny E. Greene,
- Stephanie Juneau,
- Robert Kehoe,
- Theodore Kisner,
- Mariska Kriek,
- Joel Leja,
- Marc Manera,
- Aaron Meisner,
- Ramon Miquel,
- John Moustakas,
- Francisco Prada,
- Graziano Rossi,
- Eusebio Sanchez,
- Michael Schubnell,
- Małgorzata Siudek,
- Justin Spilker,
- David Sprayberry,
- Katherine A. Suess,
- Gregory Tarlé,
- Hu Zou,
- DESI Collaboration
Affiliations
- Yunchong Zhang
- ORCiD
- Department of Physics and Astronomy and PITT PACC, University of Pittsburgh , Pittsburgh, PA 15260, USA
- David J. Setton
- ORCiD
- Department of Astrophysical Sciences, Princeton University , Princeton, NJ 08544, USA
- Sedona H. Price
- ORCiD
- Department of Physics and Astronomy and PITT PACC, University of Pittsburgh , Pittsburgh, PA 15260, USA
- Rachel Bezanson
- ORCiD
- Department of Physics and Astronomy and PITT PACC, University of Pittsburgh , Pittsburgh, PA 15260, USA
- Gourav Khullar
- ORCiD
- Department of Physics and Astronomy and PITT PACC, University of Pittsburgh , Pittsburgh, PA 15260, USA
- Jeffrey A. Newman
- ORCiD
- Department of Physics and Astronomy and PITT PACC, University of Pittsburgh , Pittsburgh, PA 15260, USA
- Jessica Nicole Aguilar
- Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory , 1 Cyclotron Road, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA
- Steven Ahlen
- ORCiD
- Physics Deptartment, Boston University , 590 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, MA 02215, USA
- Brett H. Andrews
- ORCiD
- Department of Physics and Astronomy and PITT PACC, University of Pittsburgh , Pittsburgh, PA 15260, USA
- David Brooks
- ORCiD
- Department of Physics & Astronomy, University College London , Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT, UK
- Todd Claybaugh
- Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory , 1 Cyclotron Road, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA
- Axel de la Macorra
- ORCiD
- Instituto de Física, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Mexico , Cd. de Mexico C.P. 04510, Mexico
- Biprateep Dey
- ORCiD
- Department of Physics and Astronomy and PITT PACC, University of Pittsburgh , Pittsburgh, PA 15260, USA
- Peter Doel
- Department of Physics & Astronomy, University College London , Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT, UK
- Enrique Gaztañaga
- ORCiD
- Institut d’Estudis Espacials de Catalunya (IEEC) , 08034 Barcelona, Spain; Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation, University of Portsmouth , Dennis Sciama Building, Portsmouth PO1 3FX, UK; Institute of Space Sciences , ICE-CSIC, Campus UAB, Carrer de Can Magrans s/n, 08913 Bellaterra, Barcelona, Spain
- Satya Gontcho A Gontcho
- ORCiD
- Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory , 1 Cyclotron Road, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA
- Jenny E. Greene
- ORCiD
- Department of Astrophysical Sciences, Princeton University , Princeton, NJ 08544, USA
- Stephanie Juneau
- ORCiD
- NSF NOIRLab , 950 N. Cherry Ave., Tucson, AZ 85719, USA
- Robert Kehoe
- ORCiD
- Department of Physics, Southern Methodist University , 3215 Daniel Avenue, Dallas, TX 75275, USA
- Theodore Kisner
- ORCiD
- Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory , 1 Cyclotron Road, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA
- Mariska Kriek
- ORCiD
- Leiden Observatory, Leiden University , P.O. Box 9513, NL-2300 AA Leiden, The Netherlands
- Joel Leja
- ORCiD
- Department of Astronomy & Astrophysics, The Pennsylvania State University , University Park, PA 16802, USA; Institute for Computational & Data Sciences, The Pennsylvania State University , University Park, PA 16802, USA; Institute for Gravitation and the Cosmos, The Pennsylvania State University , University Park, PA 16802, USA
- Marc Manera
- ORCiD
- Departament de Física, Serra Húnter, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona , 08193 Bellaterra (Barcelona), Spain; Institut de Física d’Altes Energies (IFAE), The Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology , Campus UAB, 08193 Bellaterra Barcelona, Spain
- Aaron Meisner
- ORCiD
- NSF NOIRLab , 950 N. Cherry Ave., Tucson, AZ 85719, USA
- Ramon Miquel
- Institut de Física d’Altes Energies (IFAE), The Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology , Campus UAB, 08193 Bellaterra Barcelona, Spain; Institució Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avançats , Passeig de Lluís Companys 23, 08010 Barcelona, Spain
- John Moustakas
- ORCiD
- Department of Physics and Astronomy, Siena College , 515 Loudon Road, Loudonville, NY 12211, USA
- Francisco Prada
- ORCiD
- Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (CSIC) , Glorieta de la Astronomía s/n, E-18008 Granada, Spain
- Graziano Rossi
- Department of Physics and Astronomy, Sejong University , Seoul 143-747, Republic of Korea
- Eusebio Sanchez
- ORCiD
- CIEMAT , Avenida Complutense 40, E-28040 Madrid, Spain
- Michael Schubnell
- Department of Physics, University of Michigan , Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA; University of Michigan , Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA
- Małgorzata Siudek
- ORCiD
- Institute of Space Sciences , ICE-CSIC, Campus UAB, Carrer de Can Magrans s/n, 08913 Bellaterra, Barcelona, Spain
- Justin Spilker
- ORCiD
- Department of Physics and Astronomy and George P. and Cynthia Woods Mitchell Institute for Fundamental Physics and Astronomy, Texas A&M University , 4242 TAMU, College Station, TX 77843-4242, USA
- David Sprayberry
- ORCiD
- NSF NOIRLab , 950 N. Cherry Ave., Tucson, AZ 85719, USA
- Katherine A. Suess
- ORCiD
- Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology and Department of Physics, Stanford University , Stanford, CA 94305, USA
- Gregory Tarlé
- ORCiD
- University of Michigan , Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA
- Hu Zou
- ORCiD
- National Astronomical Observatories, Chinese Academy of Sciences , A20 Datun Road, Chaoyang District, Beijing 100012, People's Republic of China
- DESI Collaboration
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/ad7c45
- Journal volume & issue
-
Vol. 976,
no. 1
p. 36
Abstract
Poststarburst galaxies (PSBs) are young quiescent galaxies that have recently experienced a rapid decrease in star formation, allowing us to probe the fast-quenching period of galaxy evolution. In this work, we obtained Hubble Space Telescope (HST)/WFC3 F110W imaging to measure the sizes of 171 massive ( $\mathrm{log}({M}_{* }/{M}_{\odot })\sim \,11)$ spectroscopically identified PSBs at 1 < z 1.3 selected from the DESI Survey Validation luminous red galaxy sample. This statistical sample constitutes an order of magnitude increase from the ∼20 PSBs with space-based imaging and deep spectroscopy. We perform structural fitting of the target galaxies with pysersic and compare them to quiescent and star-forming galaxies in the 3D-HST survey. We find that these PSBs are more compact than the general population of quiescent galaxies, lying systematically ∼0.1 dex below the established size–mass relation. However, their central surface mass densities are similar to those of their quiescent counterparts ( $\,{\rm{log}}({{\rm{\Sigma }}}_{1{\rm{kpc}}}/({M}_{\odot }\,{{\rm{kpc}}}^{-2}))\sim 10.1$ ). These findings are easily reconciled by later ex situ growth via minor mergers or a slight progenitor bias. These PSBs are round in projection ( b / a _median ∼ 0.8), suggesting that they are primarily spheroids, not disks, in 3D. We find no correlation between the time since quenching and light-weighted PSB sizes or central densities. This disfavors apparent structural growth due to the fading of centralized starbursts in this galaxy population. Instead, we posit that the fast quenching of massive galaxies at this epoch occurs preferentially in galaxies with preexisting compact structures.
Keywords
