The PSF Smoothing Effect on Concentration-Related Parameters of High Redshift Galaxies in HST and JWST

Abstract

We perform a comprehensive investigation of the PSF smoothing effect on the measurement of concentration-related parameters ($C$, Gini, $M_{20}$) of high redshift galaxies in the HST and JWST surveys. Our sample contains massive galaxies from the CANDELS/EGS survey (0 < z < 2), and the CEERS survey (1 < z < 3). The non-parametric concentration-related parameters ($C$, Gini, $M_{20}$) and the model-dependent parameters (n, Re) of these galaxies are derived from Statmorph and GALFIT, respectively. We try to evaluate the PSF smoothing effect by comparing the concentration-related parameters to the Sérsic index in both observations and mock images. We find that the concentration index is generally underestimated, especially for smaller galaxies with higher Sérsic index (eventually converging to the concentration index of the PSF). However, galaxies with lower Sérsic index ($n\le 1$) or larger relative size are less affected by the PSF smoothing effect. The Gini coefficient and the absolute $M_{20}$ statistic also show similar behaviour as the concentration index. Caution should be taken for the possible correction of the concentration-related parameters, where both the relative size and the Sérsic index of the galaxy are important. Compared to the HST images, the PSF smoothing is much less severe for images in the CEERS survey due to the much higher spatial resolution. In fact, it is better to use the Sérsic index rather than the non-parametric morphology indicators to trace the light concentration for galaxies at high redshifts. From the single Sérsic modelling of the HST and JWST images, we also confirm that galaxies at higher redshift are more compact with smaller $R_e$. The lower mass galaxies are more disc-like ($n\sim 1$) compared to the higher mass galaxies that are more spheroid dominated ($n\sim 3$).

Accepted by A&A, 21 pages, 20 figures. Comments are welcome

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