Galaxy morphology in major JWST deep fields Virtual Observatory Resource

Authors
  1. Genin A.
  2. Shuntov M.
  3. Brammer G.
  4. Allen N.
  5. Ito K.
  6. Magdis G.
  7. Matharu J.,Oesch P.A.
  8. Toft S.
  9. Valentino F.
  10. Published by
    CDS
Abstract

Understanding how galaxies assemble their structure and evolve morphologically over cosmic time is a central goal of galaxy evolution studies. In particular, the morphological evolution of quiescent and star-forming galaxies provides key insights into the mechanisms that regulate star formation and quenching. We present a new catalog of morphological measurements for more than 340000 sources spanning 0<z<12, derived from deep JWST NIRCam imaging across four major extragalactic fields (CEERS, PRIMER-UDS, PRIMER-COSMOS, GOODS) compiled in the DAWN JWST Archive (DJA). We performed two-dimensional surface brightness fitting for all galaxies in a uniform, flux-limited sample. Each galaxy was modeled with both a Sersic profile and a two-component (bulge and disk) decomposition, yielding consistent structural parameters, including effective radius, Sersic index (n_S_, axis ratio, and bulge-to-total ratio (B/T). To demonstrate the scientific application of our morphology catalogs, we combined these measurements with DJA photometric redshifts, physical parameters and rest-frame colors, and investigated the relation between total, bulge, and disk sizes, n_S_, star formation activity, and redshift. Bulge-dominated galaxies (high n_S_ and B/T) predominantly occupy the quiescent region of the UVJ diagram, while disk-dominated galaxies are mostly star-forming. A significant bimodality persists, with quiescent disks and compact, bulge-dominated star-forming galaxies observed out to z>3. Quiescent galaxies also show significantly higher stellar mass surface densities, nearly an order of magnitude greater at z~4 than at z~1. Our results confirm a strong and evolving link between morphology and star formation activity and support a scenario in which bulge growth and quenching are closely connected. This work is a highly valuable addition to the DJA, adding a morphological dimension to this rich dataset and thus enabling a wider scientific application.

Keywords
  1. galaxies
  2. catalogs
  3. galaxy-classification-systems
  4. infrared-photometry
  5. astronomical-models
Bibliographic source Bibcode
2025A&A...699A.343G
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History

2025-07-22T09:21:50Z
Resource record created
2025-07-22T09:21:50Z
Created
2025-08-01T08:20:05Z
Updated

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