Philipp Lang
MPIE/Munich

Abstract
Understanding the processes leading to quenching of star formation in actively star-forming galaxies is a central issue in galaxy evolution today. In this talk I will present recent results of our study exploiting the synergy between deep panchromatic imaging from the CANDELS survey combined with redshift information from 3D-HST, in order to explore the connection between galaxy structure and quenching for massive galaxies at high redshift. We fit 2D single Sérsic as well as combined bulge + disk models to both rest-frame optical light and stellar mass distributions, using a sample of 6764 massive (M>10^10Mstar) galaxies at 0.5 < z < 2.5. We confirm an increased bulge prominence among quiescent galaxies and furthermore observe an increase of the typical Sérsic index and bulge-to-total ratio among star-forming galaxies above 10^11 Mstar,suggesting that significant bulge growth precedes the quenching of star-formation. We also demonstrate that the bulge mass is a more reliable predictor of the star-forming versus quiescent state of a galaxy than the total stellar mass. I also discuss how these results hint on possible quenching mechanisms such as AGN feedback, using predictions from a state-of-the-art semi-analytic model.

2014 November 19, 13:30

IA/U.Porto
Centro de Astrofísica da Universidade do Porto (Auditorium)
Rua das Estrelas, 4150-762 Porto