CANDELS: Correlations of SEDs and Morphologies with Star-formation Status for Massive Galaxies at z ~ 2

Abstract

We present a study on Spectral Energy Distributions, Morphologies, and star formation for an IRAC-selected extremely red object sample in the GOODS Chandra Deep Field-South. This work was enabled by new HST/WFC3 near-IR imaging from the CANDELS survey as well as the deepest available X-ray data from Chandra 4 Ms observations. This sample consists of 133 objects with the 3.6um limiting magnitude of [3.6] = 21.5, and is approximately complete for galaxies with M >10^{11}M_sun at 1.5 < z < 2.5. We classify this sample into two types, quiescent and star-forming galaxies, in the observed infrared color-color ([3.6]-[24] vs K-[3.6]) diagram. The further morphological study of this sample show a consistent result with the observed color classification. The classified quiescent galaxies are bulge dominated and star-forming galaxies in the sample have disk or irregular morphologies. Our observed infrared color classification is also consistent with the rest-frame color (U-V vs V-J) classification. We also found that quiescent and star-forming galaxies are well separated in the nonparametric morphology parameter (Gini vs M_{20}) diagram measuring their concentration and clumpiness: quiescent galaxies have Gini coefficient higher than 0.58 and star forming galaxies have Gini coefficient lower that 0.58. We argue that the star formation quenching process must lead to or be accompanied by the increasing galaxy concentration. One prominent morphological feature of this sample is that disks are commonly seen in this massive galaxy sample at 1.5 < z < 2.5: 30% of quiescent galaxies and 70% of star forming galaxies with M >10^{11}M_sun have disks in their rest-frame optical morphologies. The prevalence of these extended, relatively undisturbed disks challenges the merging scenario as the main mode of massive galaxy formation.

36 pages,16 figures,Accepted by ApJ

Cited by in corpus (36)

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• The FUV to Near-IR Morphologies of Luminous Infrared Galaxies in the GOALS Sample
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• Structure and morphology of X-ray selected AGN hosts at 1<z<3 in CANDELS-COSMOS field
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• The effect of the morphological quenching mechanism on star formation activity at 0.5 < z < 1.5 in 3D-HST/CANDELS
• When did round disk galaxies form?
• Variations of the ISM Compactness Across the Main Sequence of Star-Forming Galaxies: Observations and Simulations
• Morphology and structure of BzK-selected galaxies at z~2 in the CANDELS-COSMOS field
• Physical properties of distant red galaxies in the COSMOS/UltraVISTA field