1. EPOCHS XI: The Structure and Morphology of Galaxies in the Epoch of Reionization to z ~ 12.5
- Author
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Westcott, Lewi, Conselice, Christopher J., Harvey, Thomas, Austin, Duncan, Adams, Nathan, Ferrari, Fabricio, Ferreira, Leonardo, Trussler, James, Li, Qiong, Rusakov, Vadim, Duan, Qiao, Harris, Honor, Goolsby, Caio, Broadhurst, Thomas J., Coe, Dan, Cohen, Seth H., Driver, Simon P., D'Silva, Jordan C. J., Frye, Brenda, Grogin, Norman A., Hathi, Nimish P., Jansen, Rolf A., Koekemoer, Anton M., Marshall, Madeline A., Ortiz III, Rafael, Pirzkal, Nor, Robotham, Aaron, Ryan Jr., Russell E., Summers, Jake, Willmer, Christopher N. A., Windhorst, Rogier A., and Yan, Haojing
- Subjects
Astrophysics - Astrophysics of Galaxies - Abstract
We present a structural analysis of 521 galaxy candidates at 6.5 < z < 12.5, with $SNR > 10\sigma$ in the F444W filter, taken from the EPOCHS v1 sample, consisting of uniformly reduced deep JWST NIRCam data, covering the CEERS, JADES GOOD-S, NGDEEP, SMACS0723, GLASS and PEARLS surveys. We use standard software to fit single S\'ersic models to each galaxy in the rest-frame optical and extract their parametric structural parameters (S\'ersic index, half-light radius and axis-ratio), and \texttt{Morfometryka} to measure their non-parametric concentration and asymmetry parameters. We find a wide range of sizes for these early galaxies, but with a strong galaxy-size mass correlation up to $z \sim 12$ such that galaxy sizes continue to get progressively smaller in the high-redshift regime, following $R_{e} = 2.74 \pm 0.49 \left( 1 + z \right) ^{-0.79 \pm 0.08}$ kpc. Using non-parametric methods we find that galaxy merger fractions, classified through asymmetry parameters, at these redshifts remain consistent with those in literature, maintaining a value of $f_{m} \sim 0.12 \pm 0.07$ showing little dependence with redshift when combined with literature at $z > 4$. We find that galaxies which are smaller in size also appear rounder, with an excess of high axis-ratio objects. Finally, we artificially redshift a subsample of our objects to determine how robust the observational trends we see are, determining that observed trends are due to real evolutionary effects, rather than being a consequence of redshift effects., Comment: 35 pages, 13 figures. Submitted to ApJ on 19/12/2024. Comments to corresponding author welcome at lewi.westcott@manchester.ac.uk
- Published
- 2024