MIDIS. Near-infrared rest-frame morphology of massive galaxies at $3<z<5$ in the Hubble eXtreme Deep Field

Abstract

Thanks to decades of observations using the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), the structure of galaxies at redshift $z>2$ has been widely studied in the rest-frame ultraviolet regime, which traces recent star formation from young stellar populations. But, we still have little information about the spatial distribution of the older, more evolved stellar populations, constrained by the rest-frame infrared portion of the galaxies' spectral energy distribution. We present the morphological characterization of a sample of 49 massive galaxies ($\log (M_{\star }/M_{\odot })>9$) at redshift $3<z<5$. The MIRI 5.6~$\mu$m imaging allows us to characterize the rest-frame near-infrared structure of galaxies beyond cosmic noon, at higher redshifts than possible with NIRCam, tracing their older and dust-insensitive stellar populations. We derive the non-parametric morphology of galaxies and model the light distribution of galaxies with a single Sérsic component and derive their parametric morphology. We find that at $z>3$ massive galaxies show a smooth distribution of their rest-infrared light, strongly supporting the increasing number of regular disk galaxies already in place at early epochs. On the contrary, the ultraviolet structure obtained from HST/WFC3 and JWST/NIRCam observations at $\sim 1.5\mu$m is generally more irregular, catching the most recent episodes of star formation. Importantly, we find a segregation of morphologies across cosmic time, where galaxies at redshift $z>3.75$ show later-type morphologies compared to $z\sim 3$ galaxies. These findings suggest a transition phase in galaxy assembly and central mass build-up, which is already taking place at $z\sim 3-4$. The combined analysis of NIRCam and MIRI imaging datasets allows us to prove that the rest-frame near-infrared morphology of massive galaxies at cosmic noon is typical of compact disk galaxies with a smooth mass distribution.

Accepted for publication in A&A. 10 pages, 6+2 figures

References in corpus (25)

• EAZY: A Fast, Public Photometric Redshift Code
• The KMOS^3D Survey: design, first results, and the evolution of galaxy kinematics from 0.7<z<2.7
• The James Webb Space Telescope Mission
• COSMOS2020: A panchromatic view of the Universe to $z\sim 10$ from two complementary catalogs
• Evidence for Mature Bulges and an Inside-out Quenching Phase 3 Billion Years After the Big Bang
• The Structures of Distant Galaxies I: Galaxy Structures and the Merger Rate to z~3 in the Hubble Ultra-Deep Field
• The build-up of the colour-magnitude relation in galaxy clusters since z~0.8
• A dynamically cold disk galaxy in the early Universe
• Life beyond 30: probing the -20<M_UV<-17 luminosity function at 8<z<13 with the NIRCam parallel field of the MIRI Deep Survey
• CEERS Key Paper III: The Diversity of Galaxy Structure and Morphology at z=3-9 with JWST
• Panic! At the Disks: First Rest-frame Optical Observations of Galaxy Structure at $z>3$ with JWST in the SMACS 0723 Field
• z~2: An Epoch of Disk Assembly
• A Milky Way-like barred spiral galaxy at a redshift of 3
• ALMA Lensing Cluster Survey: $HST$ and $Spitzer$ Photometry of 33 Lensed Fields Built with CHArGE
• Early Results From GLASS-JWST. XII: The Morphology of Galaxies at the Epoch of Reionization
• MIDIS: Strong (Hb + [OIII]) and Ha emitters at redshift $z\simeq 7-8$ unveiled with JWST/NIRCam and MIRI imaging in the Hubble eXtreme Deep Field (XDF)
• Early results from GLASS-JWST XIV: A first morphological atlas of the 1 < z < 5 Universe in the rest-frame optical
• Expectations of the size evolution of massive galaxies at $3\le z\le 6$ from the TNG50 simulation: the CEERS/JWST view
• A duality in the origin of bulges and spheroidal galaxies
• JWST MIRI Flight Performance: Imaging
• Identifying Galaxy Mergers in Simulated CEERS NIRCam Images using Random Forests
• MIRI Deep Imaging Survey (MIDIS) of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field
• Rest-Frame Near-Infrared Radial Light Profiles up to z=3 from JWST/NIRCam: Wavelength Dependence of the Sérsic Index
• Quantifying the stellar ages of dynamically separated bulges and disks of CALIFA spiral galaxies
• JWST/MIRI unveils the stellar component of the GN20 dusty galaxy overdensity at $z$=4.05

Cited by in corpus (6)

• The ALMA-CRISTAL survey: Resolved kinematic studies of main sequence star-forming galaxies at 4<z<6
• Little impact of mergers and galaxy morphology on the production and escape of ionizing photons in the early Universe
• A Morphology Catalog of Galaxies in CEERS: Evolution in the Size and Color Gradients of Galaxies Since Cosmic Dawn
• Discovery of a Barred-Spiral Galaxy at $z_{spec}$ = 3.16 II. The Star Formation History
• MIDIS: Unveiling the Star Formation History in massive galaxies at $1<z<4.5$ with spectro-photometric analysis
• MIDIS: Quantifying the AGN component of X-ray-detected galaxies