COSMOS-Web: The emergence of the Hubble Sequence

M. Huertas-Company, M. Shuntov, Y. Dong, M. Walmsley, O. Ilbert, H. J. McCracken, H. B. Akins, N. Allen, C. M. Casey, L. Costantin, E. Daddi, A. Dekel, M. Franco, I. L. Garland, T. Géron, G. Gozaliasl, M. Hirschmann, J. S. Kartaltepe, A. M. Koekemoer, C. LintottD. Liu, R. Lucas, K. Masters, F. Pacucci, L. Paquereau, P. G. P'erez-Gonz'alez, J. D. Rhodes, B. E. Robertson, B. Simmons, R. Smethurst, S. Toft, L. Yang

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Abstract

Leveraging the wide area coverage of the COSMOS-Web survey, we quantify the abundance of different morphological types from $z\sim 7$ with unprecedented statistics and establish robust constraints on the epoch of emergence of the Hubble sequence. We measure the global (spheroids, disk-dominated, bulge-dominated, peculiar) and resolved (stellar bars) morphologies for about 400,000 galaxies down to F150W=27 using deep learning, representing a two-orders-of-magnitude increase over previous studies. We then provide reference Stellar Mass Functions (SMFs) of different morphologies between $z\sim 0.2$ and $z\sim 7$ and best-fit parameters to inform models of galaxy formation. All catalogs and data are made publicly available. (a)At redshift z > 4.5, the massive galaxy population ($\log M_*/M_\odot>10$) is dominated by disturbed morphologies (~70%) -- even in the optical rest frame -- and very compact objects (~30%) with effective radii smaller than ~500pc. This confirms that a significant fraction of the star formation at cosmic dawn occurs in very dense regions, although the stellar mass for these systems could be overestimated.(b)Galaxies with Hubble-type morphologies -- including bulge and disk-dominated galaxies -- arose rapidly around $z\sim 4$ and dominate the morphological diversity of massive galaxies as early as $z\sim 3$. (c)Using stellar bars as a proxy, we speculate that stellar disks in massive galaxies might have been common (>50%) among the star-forming population since cosmic noon ($z\sim2$-2.5) and formed as early as $z\sim 7$ (d)Massive quenched galaxies are predominantly bulge-dominated from z~4 onward, suggesting that morphological transformations briefly precede or are simultaneous to quenching mechanisms at the high-mass end. (e) Low-mass ($\log M_*/M_\odot
Original languageEnglish
JournalarXiv.org
Publication statusAccepted/In press - 1 Feb 2025
MoE publication typeB1 Non-refereed journal articles

Keywords

  • Astrophysics - Astrophysics of Galaxies
  • Astrophysics - Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics

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