The Astrophysical Journal Letters

The Astrophysical Journal Letters

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The Astrophysical Journal Letters Volume 600 Number 2 Create an alert RSS this journal

Henry C. Ferguson et al 2004 ApJ 600 L107 doi:10.1086/378578

The Size Evolution of High-Redshift Galaxies*

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Henry C. Ferguson1,2, Mark Dickinson1,2, Mauro Giavalisco1,3, Claudia Kretchmer2, Swara Ravindranath1, Rafal Idzi2, Edward Taylor4, Christopher J. Conselice5, S. Michael Fall1, Jonathan P. Gardner6, Mario Livio1, Piero Madau7, Leonidas A. Moustakas1, Casey M. Papovich8, Rachel S. Somerville1, Hyron Spinrad9 and Daniel Stern3,10

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Abstract References Cited By

Hubble Space Telescope images of high-redshift galaxies selected via color and photometric redshifts are used to examine the size and axial ratio distribution of galaxies as a function of redshift at look-back times t > 8 Gyr. These parameters are measured at rest-frame UV wavelengths (1200 Å < λ < 2000 Å) on images with a rest-frame resolution of less than 0.8 kpc. Galaxy radii are found to scale with redshift approximately as the Hubble parameter H-1(z). This is in accord with the theoretical expectation that the typical sizes of the luminous parts of galaxies should track the expected evolution in the virial radius of dark matter halos. The mean ratio of the semimajor axis to the semiminor axis for a bright well-resolved sample of galaxies at z ~ 4 is b/a = 0.65, suggesting that these Lyman break galaxies are not drawn from a spheroidal population. However, the median concentration index of this sample is C = 3.5, which is closer to the typical concentration indices of nearby elliptical galaxies (C ~ 4) than to the values for local disk galaxies of type Sb and later (C < 2).


Footnote
*  Based on observations obtained with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope (HST), the European Southern Observatory, and the Kitt Peak National Observatory (KPNO). HST is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA), Inc., under NASA contract NAS5-26555. KPNO is part of the National Optical Astronomy Observatories, which is operated also by AURA, Inc., under cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation.
Subject headings

cosmology: observations; galaxies: evolution; galaxies: high-redshift; galaxies: structure


Dates

Issue 2 (2004 January 10)

Received 2003 May 15, accepted for publication 2003 July 23

Published 2004 January 9



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