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MORPHOLOGIES OF ∼190,000 GALAXIES AT z = 0–10 REVEALED WITH HST LEGACY DATA. I. SIZE EVOLUTION

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Published 2015 July 28 © 2015. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.
, , Citation Takatoshi Shibuya et al 2015 ApJS 219 15 DOI 10.1088/0067-0049/219/2/15

0067-0049/219/2/15

ABSTRACT

We present the redshift evolution of the galaxy effective radius re obtained from the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) samples of ∼190,000 galaxies at z = 0–10. Our HST samples consist of 176,152 photo-z galaxies at z = 0–6 from the 3D-HST+CANDELS catalog and 10,454 Lyman break galaxies (LBGs) at z = 4–10 identified in the Cosmic Assembly Near-infrared Deep Extragalactic Legacy Survey (CANDELS), HUDF 09/12, and HFF parallel fields, providing the largest data set to date for galaxy size evolution studies. We derive re with the same technique over the wide redshift range of z = 0–10, evaluating the optical-to-UV morphological K correction and the selection bias of photo-z galaxies+LBGs as well as the cosmological surface-brightness dimming effect. We find that re values at a given luminosity significantly decrease toward high z, regardless of statistics choices (e.g., ${r}_{{\rm{e}}}\propto {(1+z)}^{-1.10\pm 0.06}$ for median). For star-forming galaxies, there is no evolution of the power-law slope of the size–luminosity relation and the median Sérsic index ($n\sim 1.5$). Moreover, the re distribution is well represented by log-normal functions whose standard deviation ${\sigma }_{\mathrm{ln}{r}_{{\rm{e}}}}$ does not show significant evolution within the range of ${\sigma }_{\mathrm{ln}{r}_{{\rm{e}}}}\sim 0.45-0.75$. We calculate the stellar-to-halo size ratio from our re measurements and the dark-matter halo masses estimated from the abundance-matching study, and we obtain a nearly constant value of ${r}_{{\rm{e}}}/{r}_{\mathrm{vir}}=1.0\%-3.5\%$ at z = 0–8. The combination of the re-distribution shape+standard deviation, the constant ${r}_{{\rm{e}}}/{r}_{\mathrm{vir}}$, and $n\sim 1.5$ suggests a picture in which typical high-z star-forming galaxies have disk-like stellar components in a sense of dynamics and morphology over cosmic time of $z\sim 0-6$. If high-z star-forming galaxies are truly dominated by disks, the ${r}_{{\rm{e}}}/{r}_{\mathrm{vir}}$ value and the disk-formation model indicate that the specific angular momentum of the disk normalized by the host halo is ${j}_{{\rm{d}}}/{m}_{{\rm{d}}}\simeq 0.5-1$. These are statistical results for major stellar components of galaxies, and the detailed study of clumpy subcomponents is presented in the paper II.

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1. INTRODUCTION

Galaxy sizes offer a variety of invaluable insights into galaxy formation and evolution. The slope of a size–stellar mass (or luminosity) relation, the size growth rate, and the size distribution are key quantities for understanding the development of galaxy morphology and the properties of host dark-matter (DM) halos.

Studies of high-z galaxy sizes show substantial progress with observations from the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), which is capable of imaging with high spatial resolution. Galaxy sizes defined by the effective radius, re, have been extensively  measured with the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) and the Wide Field Camera 3/IR channel on board HST for massive galaxies at $0\lesssim z\lesssim 3$ (e.g., van der Wel et al. 2014) and $z\gtrsim 3-4$ Lyman break galaxies (LBGs) selected in the dropout technique (Steidel et al. 1999) (e.g., Trujillo et al. 2006; Dahlen et al. 2007; Toft et al. 2007, 2009; Grazian et al. 2012; Huang et al. 2013; McLure et al. 2013). However, these studies, particularly at high z, do not reach an agreement on the size growth rate. Oesch et al. (2010) have reported that the average size evolves roughly according to  ${r}_{{\rm{e}}}\propto {(1+z)}^{-1}$ based on a $z\sim 7$ LBG sample in the early-epoch data of their HST survey (see also, e.g., Bouwens et al. 2004; Holwerda et al. 2014). On the other hand, Hathi et al. (2008b) have argued that the average size scales as ${r}_{{\rm{e}}}\propto {(1+z)}^{-1.5}$ using LBGs at $z\sim 2-6$ (see also, e.g., Ferguson et al. 2004). Some studies have provided results of a growth rate falling between these two growth rates (e.g., Mosleh et al. 2012, 2013; Ono et al. 2013). Moreover, Curtis-Lake et al. (2014) have suggested that there is no significant evolution of typical galaxy sizes if one uses not average but modal values of the size distribution for representative radii at a given redshift. These discrepancies in the evolutionary trend would be attributed to small HST samples at $z\gtrsim 3-4$ and or potential biases caused by heterogenous samples and measurements taken from the literature.

The two size growth rates of ${r}_{{\rm{e}}}\propto {(1+z)}^{-1.5}$ and ${r}_{{\rm{e}}}\propto {(1+z)}^{-1}$ correspond to the cases of a fixed virial mass and a circular velocity of DM halos, respectively, if the stellar-to-halo size ratio (SHSR) is constant over the redshift range. Assuming the constant SHSR, a number of studies discuss the evolution of host DM halos with the size growth rates (e.g., Ferguson et al. 2004; Hathi et al. 2008a). However, the evolution of SHSR is not well understood. Recently, SHSRs have been estimated observationally with the results of abundance-matching techniques (e.g., Behroozi et al. 2010, 2013) for galaxies at $z\sim 0$ (Kravtsov 2013) and at $z\sim 2-10$ (Kawamata et al. 2014). Kawamata et al. (2014) conclude that there is a virtually constant value of SHSR, 3.3 ± 0.1%, over the wide redshift range. Galaxy disk-formation models of, for example, Fall (1983, 2002), Barnes & Efstathiou (1987), and Mo et al. (1998) predict that galaxy disks acquire an angular momentum from its host DM halo through tidal torques during the formation of these systems, leading to the proportionality between the two sizes. The SHSR values provide us with information about the DM spin parameter and the fraction of specific angular momentum transferred from DM halos to the central galaxy disks (e.g., Mo et al. 1998).

Additionally, the size–stellar mass relation and the scatter of the size distribution present independent evidence for the picture of galaxy disk formation (e.g., Fall 1983, 2002, Bullock et al. 2001, Shen et al. 2003). van der Wel et al. (2014) have revealed that the slope of the size–stellar mass relation and the scatter do not significantly evolve at $0\lesssim z\lesssim 3$ in a systematic structural analysis for large samples of star-forming galaxies (SFGs) and quiescent galaxies (QGs) with a photometric redshift (photo-z). The constant values of these quantities strongly suggest that the sizes of SFGs are determined by their host DM halos. However, the controversial results of the slope and scatter evolution are obtained at $z\gtrsim 3-4$ (e.g., Huang et al. 2013; Curtis-Lake et al. 2014), probably due to large statistical uncertainties given by the small galaxy samples. An analysis with a large LBG sample would reveal the galaxy structure evolution up to $z\sim 10$ with no significant statistical uncertainties and allow us to understand disk-formation mechanisms, internal star formation, and morphological evolution over cosmic time.

In this paper, we systematically investigate the redshift evolution of galaxy sizes with an unprecedentedly large sample of $186,603$ galaxies at z = 0–10 made from the HST deep data of extragalactic legacy surveys. We assess the effects of morphological K correction, statistics choice, and sample selection bias for galaxies at $z\lesssim 4$, and we then extend our systematic morphological measurements to $z\gtrsim 4$. This paper has the following structure. In Section 2, we describe the details of our HST galaxy samples. Section 3 presents methods for estimating galaxy sizes. In Section 4, we evaluate the morphological K corrections, statistics-choice dependences, and selection biases. We show the redshift evolution of size-relevant physical quantities in Section 5. Section 6 discusses the implications for galaxy formation and evolution with the results of our structural analyses. We summarize our findings in Section 7.

Throughout this paper, we adopt the concordance cosmology with $({{\rm{\Omega }}}_{m},{{\rm{\Omega }}}_{{\rm{\Lambda }}},h)=(0.3,0.7,0.7)$ (Komatsu et al. 2011). All magnitudes are given in the AB system (Oke & Gunn 1983). We refer to the HST F606W, F775W, F814W, F850LP, F098M, F105W, F125W, F140W, and F160W filters as ${V}_{606},{i}_{775},{I}_{814},{z}_{850},{Y}_{098},{Y}_{105},{J}_{125},{{JH}}_{140}$, and H160, respectively.

2. DATA AND SAMPLES

We make use of the following two galaxy samples constructed from the deep optical and near-infrared imaging data taken by HST deep extragalactic legacy surveys whose limiting magnitudes and point-spread function (PSF) FWHM sizes are summarized in Table 1. In the last subsection, we explain the stellar masses of the sample galaxies.

Table 1.  Limiting Magnitudes of HST Images for Size Analyses

  $15\sigma $ ($5\sigma $) Depth
Field V606 ${I}_{814}/{z}_{850}$ J125 H160 ${Y}_{098}{Y}_{105}{J}_{125}{H}_{160}$ a ${J}_{125}{H}_{160}$ b
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7)
HUDF 09+12 29.3 (30.5) 28.1 (29.3) 28.7 (29.9) 28.7 (29.9) 29.4 (30.6) 29.2 (30.4)
HUDF 09-P1 29.4 (30.6) 28.7 (29.9) 28.0 (29.2) 27.8 (29.0) 28.4 (29.6) 28.2 (29.4)
HUDF 09-P2 28.2 (29.4) 27.5 (28.7) 28.2 (29.4) 28.0 (29.2) 28.6 (29.8) 28.5 (29.7)
GOODS-S Deep 27.6 (28.8) 27.6 (28.8) 27.2 (28.4) 27.1 (28.3) 27.8 (29.0) 27.5 (28.7)
GOODS-S Wide 27.6 (28.8) 27.2 (28.4) 26.6 (27.8) 26.4 (27.6) 27.1 (28.3) 26.9 (28.1)
GOODS-N Deep 27.6 (28.8) 29.3 (30.5) 27.1 (28.3) 26.9 (28.1) 27.3 (28.5) 27.4 (28.6)
GOODS-N Wide 27.5 (28.7) 28.7 (29.9) 26.4 (27.6) 26.3 (27.5) 26.9 (28.1) 26.7 (27.9)
UDS 27.0 (28.2) 27.0 (28.2) 26.3 (27.5) 26.4 (27.6) 26.7 (27.9)
COSMOS 27.1 (28.3) 26.8 (28.0) 26.4 (27.6) 26.4 (27.6) 26.7 (27.9)
AEGIS 27.1 (28.3) 26.6 (27.8) 26.4 (27.6) 26.5 (27.7) 26.8 (28.0)
HFF-Abell2744P 27.9 (29.1) 27.6 (28.8) 27.6 (28.8) 27.6 (28.8) 28.1 (29.3) 27.9 (29.1)
HFF-MACS0416P 27.7 (28.9) 27.6 (28.8) 27.9 (29.1) 27.8 (29.0) 28.3 (29.5) 28.1 (29.3)
PSF FWHMc $0\buildrel{\prime\prime}\over{.} 08$ $0\buildrel{\prime\prime}\over{.} 09$ $0\buildrel{\prime\prime}\over{.} 12$ $0\buildrel{\prime\prime}\over{.} 18$ $0\buildrel{\prime\prime}\over{.} 18$ $0\buildrel{\prime\prime}\over{.} 18$

Notes. Columns: (1) Field. (2)–(7) Limiting magnitudes defined by a $15\sigma $ ($5\sigma $ in parentheses) sky noise in a $0\buildrel{\prime\prime}\over{.} 35$ diameter aperture.

aStacked image of ${Y}_{098}{Y}_{105}{J}_{125}{H}_{160}$ bands for LBGs at $z\sim 4,5,6$, and 7. The JH140 image is also included for LBGs at $z\sim 7-8$ in the HUDF 09+12 field. bStacked image of J125 and H160 bands for LBGs at $z\sim 8$. cTypical size of PSF FWHMs.

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2.1. Sample of Photo-z Galaxies at z = 0–6 in 3D-HST+CANDELS

The first sample is made of $176,152$ HST/WFC3-IR-detected galaxies with photometric redshifts (hereafter photo-z galaxies) at z = 0–6 taken from Skelton et al. (2014). These galaxies are identified in five Cosmic Assembly Near-infrared Deep Extragalactic Legacy Survey (CANDELS) fields (Grogin et al. 2011; Koekemoer et al. 2011) and detected in stacked images of the ${J}_{125},{{JH}}_{140}$, and H160 bands of WFC3/IR, which yields roughly a stellar-mass-limited sample. The photometric properties and the results of spectral energy distribution (SED) fitting for all of the sources are summarized in Skelton et al. (2014). The HST images and catalogs are publicly released at the 3D-HST website.5 The catalogs include the spectroscopic redshifts on the basis of the HST/WFC3 G141 grism observation (Brammer et al. 2012). We use galaxies whose physical quantities and photometric redshifts are well derived from SED fitting (specifically, sources with use_phot $=1$ in the public catalogs). Table 2 summarizes the number of galaxies at each redshift in the photo-z galaxy sample that we use. In this paper, we assume the Salpeter (1955) initial mass function (IMF). To obtain the Salpeter IMF values of stellar masses (M*) and star-formation rates (SFRs), we multiply the Chabrier (2003) IMF values from the Skelton et al. (2014) catalog by a factor of 1.8. We divide the sample of photo-z galaxies at z = 0–4 into two subsamples of star-forming galaxies (SFGs) and QGs by the rest-frame UVJ color criteria of Muzzin et al. (2013). Because the UVJ color criteria are not tested for $z\gt \;4$ sources, we do not apply these color criteria to the photo-z galaxies at $z\gt 4$. Muzzin et al. (2013) find that the QG fraction is small, 10%, at $z\sim 3.5$, and it is likely that a QG fraction at the early cosmic epoch of $z\gt 4$ is negligibly small, perhaps $\lt 10$%. We thus regard all of the $z\gt 4$ photo-z galaxies as SFGs. The total numbers of SFGs and QGs are 165,517 and 10,631, respectively. The H160 magnitude at the 50% completeness is ∼26.5 mag for the photo-z galaxies in the deep CANDELS fields. The details of the completeness estimates and values are presented in Skelton et al. (2014).

Table 2.  Number of Photo-z Galaxies for Our Size Measurements

  ${N}_{{\mathtt{GALFIT}}}/{N}_{\mathrm{SFG},\ \mathrm{QGs}}$
Field $z=0-1$ $z=1-2$ b $z=2-3$ b $z=3-4$ $z=4-5$ $z=5-6$
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7)
SFGs, ${r}_{{\rm{e}}}^{\mathrm{Opt}}(4500-8000$Å)
HUDF 09+12 294 (397) 368 (611) 8 (157)
HUDF 09-Pa 2168 (3467) 2024 (4707) 66 (1451)
GOODS-S Deep 1753 (2793) 1402 (3847) 37 (1296)
GOODS-S Wide 2790 (4724) 2267 (6313) 66 (2518)
GOODS-N Deep 3270 (5106) 1778 (5168) 71 (2094)
GOODS-N Wide 3903 (5939) 2731 (6611) 139 (2477)
UDS 5157 (9175) 5433 (15771) 209 (6094)
AEGIS 6441 (11074) 5833 (13943) 278 (6418)
COSMOS 6856 (11385) 3594 (9754) 179 (3915)
${N}_{\mathrm{total}}(z)$ 32632 (54060) 25430 (66725) 1053 (26420)
${N}_{\mathrm{total}}$ 59115 (147205)
   
SFGs, ${r}_{{\rm{e}}}^{\mathrm{UV}}(1500-3000$Å)
HUDF 09+12 145 (611) 79 (157) 34 (69) 19 (33) 12 (26)
HUDF 09-Pa 777 (4707) 624 (1451) 432 (936) 160 (453) 102 (177)
GOODS-S Deep 776 (3847) 633 (1296) 348 (696) 101 (347) 40 (702)
GOODS-S Wide 1297 (6313) 1154 (2518) 535 (1147) 138 (487) 44 (213)
GOODS-N Deep 1235 (5168) 784 (2094) 389 (987) 154 (446) 66 (174)
GOODS-N Wide 1711 (6611) 1114 (2477) 412 (962) 165 (516) 47 (167)
UDS 2730 (15771) 1747 (6094) 678 (2266) 180 (716) 52 (176)
AEGIS 3158 (13943) 2182 (6418) 952 (2768) 228 (873) 84 (281)
COSMOS 2413 (9754) 1642 (3915) 939 (2048) 192 (765) 54 (296)
${N}_{\mathrm{total}}(z)$ 14242 (66725) 9959 (26420) 4719 (11879) 1337 (4636) 501 (1796)
${N}_{\mathrm{total}}$ 30765 (165517)
QGs, ${r}_{e}^{\mathrm{Opt}}(4500-8000\,{\rm \AA})$
HUDF09+12 55 (85) 17 (34) 0 (3)
HUDF09-P 262 (513) 107 (320) 1 (50)
GOODS-S Deep 190 (367) 85 (242) 1 (43)
GOODS-S Wide 324 (621) 107 (363) 4 (67)
GOODS-N Deep 246 (458) 84 (290) 2 (90)
GOODS-N Wide 242 (480) 94 (289) 2 (123)
UDS 302 (876) 214 (778) 5 (165)
AEGIS 369 (849) 260 (762) 6 (243)
COSMOS 721 (1206) 148 (490) 5 (115)
${N}_{\mathrm{total}}(z)$ 2711 (5455) 1116 (3568) 26 (899)      
${N}_{\mathrm{total}}$ 3853 (9922)

Notes. Columns: (1) Field. (2)–(7) Number of photo-z galaxies that have S/N $\geqslant 15$ and reliable GALFIT outputs in each redshift range. The value in parentheses is the number of photo-z galaxies in the parent sample.

aTotal number of objects in the HUDF 09-P1 and HUDF 09-P2 fields. bThe actual redshift range is $2\leqslant z\leqslant 2.1$ ($1.2\leqslant z\leqslant 2$) for the ${r}_{{\rm{e}}}^{\mathrm{Opt}}$ (${r}_{{\rm{e}}}^{\mathrm{UV}}$) measurement. cThe numbers of QGs with ${r}_{{\rm{e}}}^{\mathrm{UV}}$ are not shown here because of the rarity at $z\gtrsim 2-3$ and the UV faintness.

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2.2. Sample of LBGs at z = 4–10 in CANDELS, HUDF 09/12, and HFF

The second sample consists of 10,454 LBGs at z = 4–10 made by Y. Harikane et al. (2015, in preparation) in the CANDELS, the Hubble Ultra Deep Field 09+12 (HUDF 09+12; Beckwith et al. 2006; Bouwens et al. 2011; Illingworth et al. 2013; Ellis et al. 2013) fields,6 and the parallel fields of Abell 2744 and MACS 0416 in the Hubble Frontier Fields (e.g., Coe et al. 2014; Ishigaki et al. 2014; Oesch et al. 2014; Atek et al. 2015). The numbers of our LBGs are summarized in Table 3. These LBGs are selected with the color criteria similar to those of Bouwens et al. (2014b). We perform source detections by SExtractor (Bertin & Arnouts 1996) in coadded images constructed from bands of ${Y}_{098}{Y}_{105}{J}_{125}{H}_{160}$, ${J}_{125}{H}_{160}$, and H160 for the $z\sim 4-7$, 8, and 10 LBGs, respectively. The JH140 band is included in the coadded image for the $z\sim 7-8$ LBGs in the HUDF 09+12 field. The flux measurements are carried out in Kron (1980)-type apertures with a Kron parameter of 1.6 whose diameter is determined in the H160 band. In two-color diagrams, we select objects with a Lyman break, no extreme-red stellar continuum, and no detection in passbands bluer than the spectral drop. See Y. Harikane et al. (2015, in preparation) for more details of the source detections and LBG selections.

Table 3.  Number of LBGs for Our Size Measurements

  ${N}_{{\mathtt{GALFIT}}}/{N}_{\mathrm{LBG}}$
Field $z\sim 4$ $z\sim 5$ $z\sim 6$ $z\sim 7$ $z\sim 8$ $z\sim 10$
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7)
HUDF 09+12 160 (348) 43 (130) 26 (86) 13 (50) 9 (24) 0 (2)
HUDF 09-P1 41 (95) 12 (30) 2 (9) 2 (7) 0 (0)
HUDF 09-P2 30 (90) 8 (37) 4 (23) 0 (16) 0 (0)
GOODS-S Deep 1046 (1872) 292 (696) 122 (311) 55 (203) 11 (57) 1 (1)
GOODS-S Wide 294 (510) 73 (142) 20 (51) 9 (31) 3 (21) 0 (0)
GOODS-N Deep 868 (1655) 279 (630) 48 (135) 35 (111) 12 (28) 1 (2)
GOODS-N Wide 522 (800) 106 (222) 25 (68) 12 (231) 3 (28) 1 (1)
UDS 152 (310) 39 (65) 12 (25)
AEGIS 189 (381) 47 (101) 11 (28)
COSMOS 209 (348) 40 (80) 11 (27)
HFF-Abell2744P 15 (37) 12 (26) 4 (7) 2 (7)
HFF-MACS0416P 30 (134) 23 (106) 5 (18) 4 (10)
${N}_{\mathrm{total}}(z)$ 2890 (5185) 1459 (3215) 422 (1096) 173 (763) 46 (195) 3 (6)
${N}_{\mathrm{total}}$ 4993 (10454)

Note. Columns: (1) Field. (2)–(7) Number of LBGs that have S/N $\geqslant 15$ and reliable GALFIT outputs in each redshift range. The value in parentheses is the number of LBGs in the parent sample.

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The H160 magnitude at 50% completeness is ∼28 mag for the LBGs in the deep CANDELS fields (Bouwens et al. 2014b). The details of the completeness estimates and values are presented in Y. Harikane et al. (2015, in preparation).

Several previous studies on galaxy size have included a galaxy at $z\sim 12$ selected in the photo-z technique (Ellis et al. 2013). In this study, we do not use the galaxy at $z\sim 12$ because the redshift of the source is under debate (e.g., Bouwens et al. 2013; Brammer et al. 2013; Capak et al. 2013; Ellis et al. 2013; Pirzkal et al. 2013).

2.3. Stellar Masses of Photo-z Galaxies and LBGs

Some analyses and discussions in this work require the M* of the photo-z galaxies and the LBGs. For the photo-z galaxies, we take M* values from Skelton et al. (2014). For the LBGs, we derive stellar masses, adopting an empirical relation between UV magnitude ${M}_{\mathrm{UV}}$ and M*. First, we calculate ${M}_{\mathrm{UV}}$ from the total magnitudes in the LBG detection images (Section 3), assuming that the typical redshifts are $\langle z\rangle \sim 3.8,4.9,5.9,6.8,7.9$, and 10.4. The stellar masses are obtained by converting their ${M}_{\mathrm{UV}}$ through the empirical relation from González et al. (see also the updated result of González et al. 2014):

Equation (1)

where ${L}_{1500}$ is the luminosity at the rest-frame 1500 Å. This empirical relation is derived under assumptions similar to ours (the Salpeter IMF and no nebular emission lines included in the SED).

To test whether this empirical relation (Equation (1)) of ${L}_{\mathrm{UV}}$M* is reliable and consistent with the M* estimates of the photo-z galaxy sample, we compare this empirical relation with the ${M}_{\mathrm{UV}}$M* relations derived from the photo-z galaxies.

We estimate ${M}_{\mathrm{UV}}$ from the absolute UV magnitudes at a wavelength of 2800 Å from the photo-z catalog, assuming that the majority of star-forming galaxies have a flat UV spectrum of ${f}_{\nu }=$ constant. We present the ${M}_{\mathrm{UV}}$M* relations of the photo-z galaxies in Figure 1. The UV magnitude correlates well with M*, suggesting the existence of the "star-formation main sequence" (e.g., Daddi et al. 2007; Lee et al. 2012; Whitaker et al. 2012; Steinhardt et al. 2014).

Figure 1.

Figure 1. Relation between UV magnitude and stellar mass for the SFGs at $z\sim 0-6$. The circles with error bars indicate SFGs at $z=0-1$ (red), $z=1-2$ (magenta), 2–3 (orange), 3–4 (green), 4–5 (cyan), and 5–6 (blue). The colored solid lines present the best-fit M*${M}_{\mathrm{UV}}$ relation at each z bin with the color coding the same as for the circles. The black solid line denotes the M*${M}_{\mathrm{UV}}$ relation for LBGs at $z\sim 4$ in González et al. (2011). The top x axis provides the corresponding UV luminosity in units of ${L}_{z=3}^{*}$. The error bars denote the 16th and 84th percentiles of the distribution. The vertical dashed lines denote thresholds of the ${L}_{\mathrm{UV}}$ bins, 1, 0.3, 0.12, and $0.048\;{L}_{\mathrm{UV}}/{L}_{z=3}^{*}$, from left to right.

Standard image High-resolution image

Figure 1 shows that the slopes of the relations appear to be flatter at a bright range of ${M}_{\mathrm{UV}}\lesssim -22$ than at a faint ${M}_{\mathrm{UV}}$ range. Similar flat slopes are reported by a large survey area of the CANDELS fields (Stark et al. 2009; Lee et al. 2011; Salmon et al. 2015). Because our LBGs used in this analysis have magnitudes of ${M}_{\mathrm{UV}}\geqslant -22$, we fit $\mathrm{log}{M}_{*}=a+{{bM}}_{\mathrm{UV}}$ to the ${M}_{\mathrm{UV}}$M* relation at ${M}_{\mathrm{UV}}\geqslant -22$, where a and b are free parameters. The best-fit functions for the photo-z galaxies are

Equation (2)

If we assume that the magnitudes of 1500–1700 Å are the same for typical LBGs with ${f}_{\nu }=$ constant, the slopes b of −0.58 ± 0.02 and −0.59 ± 0.03 at $z\sim 4-6$ roughly agree with that of Equation (1) (i.e., $b=-0.68\pm 0.08$). We thus conclude that the empirical relation (Equation (1)) is reliable and consistent with the M* estimates of the photo-z galaxy sample. Moreover, no strong evolution in the ${M}_{\mathrm{UV}}$M* relation is found at $z\gtrsim 4$ in Equation (2) and Figure 1. We use Equation (1) to estimate the M* of our $z\gtrsim 4$ LBGs.

3. SIZE MEASUREMENT

In this section, we describe methods to measure galaxy sizes by using the high spatial resolution images of HST. To minimize the effect of morphological K correction, we use images of four bands, V606 and I814 on ACS7 and J125 and H160 on WFC3/IR. We select one of these bands whose entire passband is covered by the wavelength range of ${\lambda }_{\mathrm{int}}^{\mathrm{UV}}=1500-3000$ Å or ${\lambda }_{\mathrm{int}}^{\mathrm{Opt}}=4500-8000$ Å of each object. If two or more filter passbands meet this criterion, we choose a band that observes the shortest wavelength. Prior to the size measurements, we extract $18\prime\prime \times 18\prime\prime $ cutout images from the ${V}_{606}{I}_{814}{J}_{125}{H}_{160}$ data at the position of each photo-z galaxy and LBG. The size of the cutout images is sufficiently large to investigate entire galaxy structures, even for extended objects at $z\sim 0-1$. We use the coadded images of ${Y}_{098}{Y}_{105}{J}_{125}{H}_{160}$, ${J}_{125}{H}_{160}$, and H160 constructed in Section 2.2 for the $z\sim 4-7$, 8, and 10 LBGs, respectively. The limiting magnitudes of these coadded images are summarized in Table 1.

We measure the galaxy size basically in the same manner as previous studies for high-z LBGs (e.g., Ono et al. 2013) based on the two-dimensional (2D) surface-brightness (SB) profile fitting with the GALFIT software (Peng et al. 2002, 2010). We fit a single Sérsic profile (Sérsic 1963, 1968) to the 2D SB distribution of each galaxy to obtain the half-light radius along the semimajor axis, ${r}_{{\rm{e}},\mathrm{major}}$. The ${r}_{{\rm{e}},\mathrm{major}}$ is converted to the "circularized" radius, re, through ${r}_{{\rm{e}}}\equiv a\sqrt{b/a}={r}_{{\rm{e}},\mathrm{major}}\sqrt{q}$, where a, b, and q are the major and minor axes and axis ratio, respectively. Several authors studying $z\sim 0-3$ galaxies claim that ${r}_{{\rm{e}},\mathrm{major}}$ should be used because ${r}_{{\rm{e}},\mathrm{major}}$ does not depend strongly on the galaxy inclination (e.g., van der Wel et al. 2014). However, the circularized radius re has been widely used in size measurements for faint and small high-z sources (e.g., Mosleh et al. 2012; Ono et al. 2013; Holwerda et al. 2014). We here use the circularized radius re in order to perform self-consistent size measurements and fair comparisons from $z\sim 0$ to ∼10.

We create sigma and mask images to estimate the fitting weight of individual pixels and mask neighboring objects of the main galaxy components, respectively. The sigma images are generated from the drizzle weight maps produced by the HST data reduction (Koekemoer et al. 2003). We also include the Poisson noise from the galaxy light to the sigma image (e.g., Hathi et al. 2009; van der Wel et al. 2012). The mask images are constructed from segmentation maps produced by SExtractor. We identify neighboring objects with the SExtractor detection parameters of DETECT_MINAREA = 5 pixel, DETECT_THRESH $=\;2\sigma $, DETECT_NTHRESH $=\;16$, and DEBLEND_MINCONT $=\;0.0001$.

We input initial parameters taken from the 3D-HST+CANDELS photometric catalog (Skelton et al. 2014) for the photo-z galaxies. Specifically, the total magnitude m, axis ratio q, position angle P.A., and half-light radius re of each galaxy are initial parameters that are written in the GALFIT configuration file. The Sérsic index n is set to n = 1.5 as an initial value for the photo-z galaxies, whereas the initial n does not strongly affect the fitting results (Yuma et al. 2011, 2012). In fact, we change the initial parameters of the Sérsic index to n = 1 and 3, but we still obtain similar best-fit n values even with these different initial parameters. For the LBG sample, the initial parameters are taken from the results of SExtractor photometry (Y. Harikane et al., in preparation). The Sérsic index for LBGs is fixed to 1.5 for reliable fitting for faint and small high-z sources. This fixed Sérsic index is justified by the evolution of n in SFGs, as demonstrated in Section 5.1. To obtain ${r}_{{\rm{e}}},n$ and q, we allow the parameters to vary in the ranges ${\rm{\Delta }}m\lt 3$ mag, $0.3\lt {r}_{{\rm{e}}}\lt 400$ pixels, $0.2\lt n\lt 8$, $0.0001\lt q\lt 1$, ${\rm{\Delta }}x\lt 2$ pixel, and ${\rm{\Delta }}y\lt 2$ pixel, which are quite similar to those of van der Wel et al. (2012). We discard objects whose one or more fitting parameters reach the limit of the parameter ranges (e.g., re = 400). The PSF models of the HST images are provided by the 3D-HST project (Skelton et al. 2014).

We have analyzed the photo-z galaxies and LBGs shown in Sections 2.1 and 2.2. As we discuss below, the sizes of faint galaxies are poorly determined. We thus choose photo-z galaxies and LBGs whose sources have a signal-to-noise ratio (S/N) greater than 15. This S/N $\mathrm{threshold}$ is determined by Monte Carlo simulations for faint and small high-z sources (e.g., van der Wel et al. 2012; Ono et al. 2013). Tables 2 and 3 summarize the number of photo-z galaxies and LBGs, respectively, that are analyzed in our study. The object numbers in our size analysis are 142,273 (9767) in V606, 136,493 (10,118) in I814, 139,308 (10,845) in J125, and 147,204 (11,297) in H160, for the SFGs (QGs) of the photo-z sample, and 7233 for the LBGs. The total numbers of SFGs (QGs) that are well fit in the optical and UV stellar continuum emission are 59,115 (4234) at $z\sim 0-3$ and 30,765 (799) at $z\sim 1-6$, respectively, while the sizes of $4993$ LBGs are securely measured. Tables 4 and 5 show the size measurements given by our structural analysis for the photo-z galaxies and the LBGs, respectively. Figure 2 presents example images of the fitting results, demonstrating that our size measurements are well performed.

Figure 2.

Figure 2. Examples of Sérsic profile fitting results. The right, middle, and left panels indicate the results for the SFGs in the rest-frame optical and UV stellar continuum emission and the LBGs, respectively. Each of the four-panel sets presents the original, the best-fit model, the residual, and the mask images, from left to right (see Section 3 for details) for one object. Each row, from top to bottom, denotes example galaxies from $z\sim 0$ to ∼10. The SFGs at $z=1-2$ and $z=2-3$ are the same objects between the left and right panel sets that exhibit the images at the rest-frame optical and UV wavelengths, respectively. The black tick in the panel for the SFG at $z\sim 0-1$ indicates the size of $1\prime\prime $. North is up and east is to the left.

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Table 4.  Catalog of Photo-z Galaxies with Our Size Measurements

Catalog ID ${m}_{\mathrm{UV}}$ ${R}_{{\rm{e}},\mathrm{major}}^{\mathrm{UV}}$ ${n}_{\mathrm{UV}}$ ${q}_{\mathrm{UV}}$ ${m}_{\mathrm{Opt}}$ ${R}_{{\rm{e}},\mathrm{major}}^{\mathrm{Opt}}$ ${n}_{\mathrm{Opt}}$ ${q}_{\mathrm{Opt}}$ flag
  (mag) (arcsec)     (mag) (arcsec)      
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9) (10)
gds_29 23.70 ± 0.021 0.489 ± 0.016 0.94 ± 0.04 0.92 ± 0.02 0
gds_32 24.34 ± 0.042 0.164 ± 0.013 4.15 ± 0.35 0.77 ± 0.03 0
gds_59 25.31 ± 0.029 0.183 ± 0.008 0.65 ± 0.09 0.57 ± 0.03 0
gds_86 25.58 ± 0.031 0.174 ± 0.008 0.36 ± 0.09 0.73 ± 0.04 0
gds_122 25.70 ± 0.051 0.201 ± 0.017 0.66 ± 0.14 0.87 ± 0.06 0

Note. A catalog of the photo-z galaxies with S/N $\geqslant 15$ and reliable outputs of GALFIT fitting. Five example objects are shown here. Columns: (1) Catalog ID. The alphabetical characters represent the HST fields ("gds": GOODS-South; "gdn": GOODSN-North; "uds": UDS; "aeg": AEGIS; "cos": COSMOS). The numeric characters correspond to the ID number in the 3D-HST catalog (Skelton et al. 2014). (2) and (6) Total magnitude. (3) and (7) Effective radius along the major axis in arcseconds. (4) and (8) Sérsic index. (5) and (9) Axis ratio. (10) Flag for the reliability of GALFIT fitting. The values of 0 and 1 indicate reliable and good measurements, respectively. (2)–(5) Measurements at ${\lambda }_{\mathrm{int}}^{\mathrm{UV}}=1500-3000$ Å. (7)–(9) Measurements at ${\lambda }_{\mathrm{int}}^{\mathrm{Opt}}=4500-8000$ Å. All measurement uncertainties are the half-width of the 68% confidence interval.

Only a portion of this table is shown here to demonstrate its form and content. A machine-readable version of the full table is available.

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Table 5.  Catalog of LBGs with Our Size Measurements

Catalog ID ${m}_{\mathrm{UV}}$ ${R}_{{\rm{e}},\mathrm{major}}^{\mathrm{UV}}$ ${q}_{\mathrm{UV}}$ flag
  (mag) (arcsec)    
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5)
z4_gdsd_10028 26.42 ± 0.05 0.344 ± 0.029 0.16 ± 0.03 0
z4_gdsd_10045 25.23 ± 0.02 0.241 ± 0.008 0.57 ± 0.02 0
z4_gdsd_10054 26.58 ± 0.03 0.100 ± 0.009 0.47 ± 0.08 0
z4_gdsd_10153 27.60 ± 0.07 0.102 ± 0.024 0.43 ± 0.21 0
z4_gdsd_10202 26.33 ± 0.04 0.196 ± 0.012 0.38 ± 0.05 0

Note. A catalog of the LBGs with S/N $\geqslant 15$ and reliable outputs of GALFIT fitting. Five example objects are shown here. Columns: (1) Catalog ID in Y. Harikane et al. (2015, in preparation) (2) Total magnitude. (3) Effective radius along the major axis in arcseconds. (4) Axis ratio. (5) Flag for the reliability of GALFIT fitting. The values of 0 and 1 indicate reliable and good measurements, respectively. The GALFIT fitting is performed in the coadded HST images (see Section 3). Note that Sérsic indices are not listed due to fixed n values in the GALFIT fitting. All measurement uncertainties are the half-width of the 68% confidence interval.

Only a portion of this table is shown here to demonstrate its form and content. A machine-readable version of the full table is available.

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Note that clumpy structures are masked in the fitting, as indicated in the mask panels of Figure 2. This masking procedure is included in our analyses because a single Sérsic profile fitting is not reliable for galaxies with clumpy structures. Moreover, the number of well-fit galaxies decreases if no masking is applied. Nevertheless, we examine whether the masking procedures change our conclusions, and we find that the re measurements are statistically comparable in galaxies with and without masking. The fraction of galaxies with clumpy structures ranges from $\sim 30\%$ at $z\sim 1\%$ to $\sim 50\%$ at $z\sim 2$. This study only addresses the major stellar components of galaxies. The detailed analyses and the results of clumpy stellar subcomponents are presented in paper II.

van der Wel et al. (2012, 2014) obtain their re values in the J125, JH140, and H160 bands for all of the 3D-HST+CANDLES galaxies using the GALAPAGOS software (Barden et al. 2012), which is a wrapper of SExtractor and GALFIT for morphological analyses. Several morphological studies have utilized GALAPAGOS, allowing for the simultaneous determination of both the structural parameters and the background flux level for multiobjects. In Figure 3, we compare our re measurements with those of van der Wel et al. (2014) estimated with GALAPAGOS. We find that our re values are in good agreement with those obtained by van der Wel et al. (2014). We also find that faint galaxies with S/N $\lt 15$ are significantly scattered in Figure 3. This confirms that the threshold of S/N $\geqslant 15$ is important for secure size measurements.

Figure 3.

Figure 3. Comparison between the effective radii of re and ${r}_{{\rm{e}},\mathrm{vdw}}$ measured by this study and by van der Wel et al. (2014), respectively, for objects with S/N $\geqslant 15$ (black dots) and $\lt 15$ (gray crosses at ${H}_{160}\gtrsim 26.5$ mag). The right panel shows histograms for the number of the galaxies. The black and gray histograms denote objects with S/N $\geqslant 15$ and $\lt 15$, respectively. The number of objects with S/N $\lt 15$ is multiplied by a factor of 100 for clarity.

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4.  K CORRECTION, STATISTICAL CHOICE, AND SELECTION BIAS

4.1. Effect of Morphological K Correction

We investigate the effects of morphological K correction in our size measurements, comparing our re at different wavelengths. Because the HST imaging data cover up to the H160 band, we can study the rest-frame UV morphology for galaxies at $z\gtrsim 3$. Understanding the effects of morphological K correction is considerably important in evaluating the size evolution of star-forming galaxies over a wide redshift range of $0\lesssim z\lesssim 10$. The sizes in the rest-frame UV and optical stellar continuum emission, ${r}_{{\rm{e}}}^{\mathrm{UV}}$ and ${r}_{{\rm{e}}}^{\mathrm{Opt}}$, tracing different stellar populations, would yield a large difference in re. Here we make a comparison between ${r}_{{\rm{e}}}^{\mathrm{UV}}$ and ${r}_{{\rm{e}}}^{\mathrm{Opt}}$ of the SFGs at $1.2\lesssim z\lesssim 2.1$ where both radii can be measured with the HST data.

Figure 4 shows the differences between ${r}_{{\rm{e}}}^{\mathrm{UV}}$ and ${r}_{{\rm{e}}}^{\mathrm{Opt}}$ of the SFGs as a function of stellar mass. Although we find a large scatter, the median values of $({r}_{{\rm{e}}}^{\mathrm{UV}}-{r}_{{\rm{e}}}^{\mathrm{Opt}})/{r}_{{\rm{e}}}^{\mathrm{Opt}}$ are less than 20% in all stellar mass bins. This indicates that the differences in statistical re measurements are small for star-forming galaxies with $\mathrm{log}{M}_{*}=9-11\;{M}_{\odot }$ at $z\sim 1-2$.

Figure 4.

Figure 4. Differences between ${r}_{{\rm{e}}}^{\mathrm{UV}}$ and ${r}_{{\rm{e}}}^{\mathrm{Opt}}$ for the SFGs at $1.2\lesssim z\lesssim 2.1$ (gray dots) as a function of stellar mass. The gray circles represent the median values of $({r}_{{\rm{e}}}^{\mathrm{UV}}-{r}_{{\rm{e}}}^{\mathrm{Opt}})/{r}_{{\rm{e}}}^{\mathrm{Opt}}$ in different stellar mass bins. The right panel shows histograms for the number of SFGs.

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Similarly, van der Wel et al. (2014) have found that ${r}_{{\rm{e}},\mathrm{major}}$ is typically smaller in redder bands for SFGs at $z\sim 0-2$ (see also, e.g., Szomoru et al. 2011; Wuyts et al. 2012). This trend is more significant in more massive SFGs. The smaller size in redder bands could be interpreted as heavier dust attenuation in the galactic central regions in bluer bands (e.g., Kelvin et al. 2012) and or inside-out disk formation (e.g., Bezanson et al. 2009; Brooks et al. 2009; Naab et al. 2009; Nelson et al. 2012; Patel et al. 2013). We confirm the wavelength dependence even in our re in the most massive M* bin, as shown in Figure 4. van der Wel et al. (2014) have parameterized the wavelength dependence of ${r}_{{\rm{e}},\mathrm{major}}$ as a function of redshift and stellar mass. Following the formula, the size difference fraction $({r}_{{\rm{e}}}^{\mathrm{UV}}-{r}_{{\rm{e}}}^{\mathrm{Opt}})/{r}_{{\rm{e}}}^{\mathrm{Opt}}$ is calculated to be ∼30% for $z\sim 2$ galaxies with $\mathrm{log}{M}_{*}=11\;{M}_{\odot }$.

Note that the difference of stellar population becomes smaller at $z\gt 2$ than at $z\sim 1-2$, which is because the short cosmic age of $z\gt 2$ provides a smaller stellar-age difference and less metal enrichment than that of $z\sim 1-2$. This agreement of ${r}_{{\rm{e}}}^{\mathrm{UV}}$ and ${r}_{{\rm{e}}}^{\mathrm{Opt}}$ suggests that the statistical ${r}_{{\rm{e}}}^{\mathrm{UV}}$ values represent the typical sizes of stellar-component distribution for star-forming galaxies of SFGs and LBGs at $z\gtrsim 3$ with a small systematic uncertainty of $\lesssim 30$%.8

We examine the effect of morphological K correction in more detail by investigating the evolutionary trends of re and size-relevant quantities in the rest-frame optical and UV emission for the photo-z galaxies at $z\sim 0-6$. Figure 5 presents the redshift evolution of re, n, and the star-formation rate surface density (SFR SD), ${{\rm{\Sigma }}}_{\mathrm{SFR}}$. The SFR SD is derived in the effective radius and calculated by

Equation (3)

where a factor of $1/2$ corrects for the SFR value, which is derived from the total magnitudes. For the photo-z galaxies, we use SFRs taken from the catalog of Skelton et al. (2014). For LBGs, we compute SFRs from ${L}_{\mathrm{UV}}$ using the relation of Kennicutt (1998a):

Equation (4)

van der Wel et al. (2014) have already examined the re evolution at 5000 Å in the rest frame for galaxies at $0\lesssim z\lesssim 3$ in the 3D-HST+CANDELS sample. In our study, we extend this analysis of $0\lesssim z\lesssim 3$ to $z\gtrsim 4$, using the photo-z galaxies and the LBGs.

Figure 5.

Figure 5. Redshift evolution of size-relevant quantities for the photo-z galaxies in different stellar mass bins ($\mathrm{log}{M}_{*}=9-9.5,9.5-10,10-10.5,$ and 10.5–11 ${M}_{\odot }$ from left to right). From top to bottom, the panels show the effective radius re, Sérsic index n, and SFR SD ${{\rm{\Sigma }}}_{\mathrm{SFG}}$. The blue and red circles indicate median values of ${r}_{{\rm{e}}}^{\mathrm{UV}}$ and ${r}_{{\rm{e}}}^{\mathrm{Opt}}$, respectively, for the SFGs. The open squares in the right-most panels present the median values of ${r}_{{\rm{e}}}^{\mathrm{Opt}}$ for the QGs with $\mathrm{log}{M}_{*}=10.5-11\;{M}_{\odot }$. The error bars denote the 16th and 84th percentiles of the data point distribution. In the top panels, the best-fit re curve in the bin of $\mathrm{log}{M}_{*}=9.5-10\;{M}_{\odot }$ is plotted for reference with the solid and dashed lines. The best-fit ${\beta }_{z}$ and ${\beta }_{H}$ values are −0.72 ± 0.04 and −0.60 ± 0.02, respectively. The dashed gray lines in the bottom panels represent the ${{\rm{\Sigma }}}_{\mathrm{SFG}}$ evolution calculated with $\mathrm{SFR}=10\;{M}_{\odot }\;{\mathrm{yr}}^{-1}$ and the best-fit re curve. The horizontal lines in the Redshift-Sersic index panels denote a weighted mean of $\langle n\rangle =1.4$. In the second-from-right and right-most panels of the Sérsic index plots, the open diamonds denote measurements of the Sérsic index for SFGs in Morishita et al. (2014). The Sérsic index estimates of Morishita et al. (2014) are comparable to ours. In the panels of low-mass $\mathrm{log}\;{M}_{*}=9-9.5\;{M}_{\odot }$, the quantities for high redshifts are not plotted because of their poor statistics.

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In Figure 5, the median values of these quantities are in good agreement between the measurements in the rest-frame optical and UV emission of the SFGs at $2\lesssim z\lesssim 3$. Additionally, the evolutionary tracks at $z\lesssim 3$ smoothly connect with those at $z\gtrsim 3$. We also find no strong dependence of these evolutionary trends on stellar mass. These agreements confirm a small effect of morphological K correction on the median re values.

4.2. Statistical Difference and Selection Bias

We examine the redshift evolution of median, average, and modal re of our galaxies to evaluate statistical differences and selection biases. We define four ${L}_{\mathrm{UV}}$ bins for these analyses. The ${L}_{\mathrm{UV}}$ bins are 1–10, 0.3–1, 0.12–0.3, and 0.048–0.12 ${L}_{\mathrm{UV}}/{L}_{z=3}^{*}$, where ${L}_{z=3}^{*}$ is the characteristic UV luminosity of LBGs at $z\sim 3$ (${M}_{\mathrm{UV}}=-21$, Steidel et al. 1999).9 To investigate the re distribution shape, in Figure 6 we plot the re distribution of SFGs and LBGs at $z\sim 1-6$ in the bin of ${L}_{\mathrm{UV}}=0.3-1\;{L}_{z=3}^{*}$ that has good re measurement accuracies whose typical reduced ${\chi }^{2}$ values are the smallest among the ${L}_{\mathrm{UV}}$ bins of the re measurements. We fit the re with the log-normal distribution

Equation (5)

where $\bar{{r}_{{\rm{e}}}}$ and ${\sigma }_{\mathrm{ln}{r}_{{\rm{e}}}}$ are the peak of re and the standard deviation of $\mathrm{ln}{r}_{{\rm{e}}}$, respectively. We fit the log-normal functions to the re distribution data with the two free parameters of $\bar{{r}_{{\rm{e}}}}$ and ${\sigma }_{\mathrm{ln}{r}_{{\rm{e}}}}$, and we present the best-fit log-normal functions in Figure 6 for the data of good statistics, the SFGs at $z\sim 1-3$, and the LBGs at $z\sim 4-6$ in the ${L}_{\mathrm{UV}}=0.3-1.0{L}_{\mathrm{UV}}^{*}$ bin. The re distributions of the high-z star-forming galaxies are well represented by the log-normal distribution. The reduced ${\chi }^{2}$ values are 0.006, 0.003, 0.004, 0.005, and 0.011 for the SFGs at $z=1-2$ and 2–3 and the LBGs at $z\sim 4$, 5, and 6, respectively. Figure 7 is the same as Figure 6, but for all of our galaxies. Figure 7 indicates that the re distributions are well fitted by the log-normal functions in the wide range of redshift, $z\sim 0-6$, and the UV luminosity, $\sim 0.12-10{L}_{\mathrm{UV}}^{*}$. Note that log-normal functions cannot be fitted to the data of the $z\gtrsim 7$ galaxies and some low-z galaxies in Figure 7 because of the small statistics. Moreover, the fitting result of $z\sim 0-1$ is only obtained for the ${r}_{{\rm{e}}}^{\mathrm{Opt}}$ distribution in the luminosity bin of $0.12-0.1{L}_{\mathrm{UV}}^{*}$ because of the poor statistics of the other luminosity bin data.

Figure 6.

Figure 6. Distribution of ${r}_{{\rm{e}}}^{\mathrm{UV}}$ for the SFGs and the LBGs at $z\sim 1-6$ in the bin of ${L}_{\mathrm{UV}}=0.3-1\;{L}_{z=3}^{*}$. The histograms and the curves show the ${r}_{{\rm{e}}}^{\mathrm{UV}}$ distributions and the best-fit log-normal functions, respectively, for the SFGs at $z=1-2$ (green) and 2–3 (light green) and the LBGs at $z\sim 4$ (blue), 5 (light blue), and 6 (cyan). The y axis is arbitrary. The histograms and curves are slightly shifted along the x and y axes for clarity. The shifted values are ${\rm{\Delta }}{r}_{{\rm{e}}}=-0.25,-0.12,-0.09,-0.04$, and 0 kpc for $z=1-2$ and $z=2-3$ star-forming galaxies and $z\sim 4$, $z\sim 5$, and $z\sim 6$ LBGs, respectively. Although these choices of  shifts moderately cancel out the trend of the re evolution, the re decrease toward high z is still clearly found.

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Figure 7.

Figure 7. Distribution of re in different ${L}_{\mathrm{UV}}$ bins, $0.12-0.3$ (left), 0.3–1 (middle), and 1–10 (right) ${L}_{\mathrm{UV}}/{L}_{z=3}^{*}$. Each row displays galaxies from $z=0-1$ (bottom) to z = 8 (top). The red, green, and blue histograms indicate the distribution of ${r}_{{\rm{e}}}^{\mathrm{Opt}}$ and ${r}_{{\rm{e}}}^{\mathrm{UV}}$ for the star-forming galaxies and ${r}_{{\rm{e}}}^{\mathrm{UV}}$ for the LBGs, respectively. The solid curves denote the best-fit log-normal functions for these histograms. The solid and dashed arrows present the median and average values of re with the color coding same as the curves. The y axis is arbitrary.

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Because the re distributions follow the log-normal functions, the average, median, and modal values of $\mathrm{ln}{r}_{{\rm{e}}}$ should be the same. However, in previous studies, the size evolution is discussed with the average, median, and modal values of re in the linear space (e.g., Bouwens et al. 2004; Oesch et al. 2010; Grazian et al. 2012; Ono et al. 2013; Holwerda et al. 2014). Here we obtain re measurements with different statistics choices in the linear space, following the previous studies, and evaluate the differences in the size evolution results. We derive size growth rates based on average, median, and modal re in a bin of $0.3-1\;{L}_{\mathrm{UV}}/{L}_{z=3}^{*}$, estimating the modal re by fitting the size distributions with a log-normal function. In Figure 8, we compare our re measurements with those of the previous studies that apply the different statistics.10 We confirm that our results are consistent with those of the previous studies. Moreover, Figure 8 indicates that galaxy sizes decrease from $z\sim 0$ to ∼6 in any statistical choices of average, median, and mode.

Figure 8.

Figure 8. Difference of the size evolution results based on the average (crosses), median (filled circles), and modal (open diamonds) values of re in the bin of ${L}_{\mathrm{UV}}=0.3-1{L}_{z=3}^{*}$. The red, cyan, and blue filled symbols indicate ${r}_{{\rm{e}}}^{\mathrm{Opt}}$ and ${r}_{{\rm{e}}}^{\mathrm{UV}}$ for the SFGs and ${r}_{{\rm{e}}}^{\mathrm{UV}}$ for the LBGs, respectively. The error bars for our re are not plotted for clarity, although these errors are included for estimating ${\beta }_{z}$. The solid, dashed, and dot-dashed curves denote the best-fit size evolution for the average, median, and modal re values, respectively, in the linear space. Note that these differences in the statistical results are found in the linear space of re because the re distributions follow the log-normal functions (see the text). The re values for LBGs in the literature are plotted with gray symbols (open circles: Curtis-Lake et al. 2014; open pentagon: Holwerda et al. 2014; open diamonds: Huang et al. 2013; filled triangles: Ono et al. 2013; open triangle: Grazian et al. 2012; open inverse triangles: Oesch et al. 2010; open squares: Bouwens et al. 2004).

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We fit ${r}_{{\rm{e}}}={B}_{z}{(1+z)}^{{\beta }_{z}}$ for the average, median, and modal re values given by our and previous studies, where Bz and ${\beta }_{z}$ are free parameters. The fitting is performed for the combination of ${r}_{{\rm{e}}}^{\mathrm{UV}}$ and ${r}_{{\rm{e}}}^{\mathrm{Opt}}$ as well as for ${r}_{{\rm{e}}}^{\mathrm{UV}}$ only. Table 6 summarizes the best-fit Bz and ${\beta }_{z}$ values. Table 7 is a summary of the samples and ${\beta }_{z}$ values from our and previous studies for LBGs with $z\gtrsim 4$. Our average, median, and modal re values scale as $\propto {(1+z)}^{-1\sim -1.3}$, indicating that, again, the choices of statistics in re measurements has no significant effect on size growth rates. This conclusion is consistent with the result that ${\sigma }_{\mathrm{ln}{r}_{{\rm{e}}}}$ shows no significant evolution, as discussed in Section 6.1.1.

Table 6.  Summary of the Best-fit Size Growth Rates

Data points Sample ${L}_{\mathrm{UV}}/{L}_{z=3}^{*}$ Bz ${\beta }_{z}$ BH ${\beta }_{H}$
      (kpc)   (kpc)  
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7)
Median All 1–10 4.78 ± 0.68 −0.84 ± 0.11 3.80 ± 0.40 −0.62 ± 0.08
    0.3–1 5.45 ± 0.31 −1.10 ± 0.06 4.33 ± 0.17 −0.86 ± 0.04
    0.12–0.3 4.44 ± 0.19 −1.22 ± 0.05 3.46 ± 0.13 −0.97 ± 0.05
  w/o ${r}_{{\rm{e}}}^{\mathrm{Opt}}$ 1–10 4.05 ± 0.59 −0.78 ± 0.08 3.09 ± 0.36 −0.56 ± 0.06
    0.3–1 5.21 ± 0.28 −1.15 ± 0.07 3.54 ± 0.29 −0.80 ± 0.05
    0.12–0.3 3.54 ± 0.58 −1.11 ± 0.11 2.45 ± 0.32 −0.78 ± 0.08
Average All 1–10 5.80 ± 0.65 −0.79 ± 0.10 4.91 ± 0.42 −0.61 ± 0.07
    0.3–1 5.85 ± 0.33 −0.95 ± 0.07 4.83 ± 0.20 −0.74 ± 0.04
    0.12–0.3 5.52 ± 0.43 −1.17 ± 0.07 4.29 ± 0.27 −0.87 ± 0.05
  w/o ${r}_{{\rm{e}}}^{\mathrm{Opt}}$ 1–10 11.3 ± 4.44 −1.22 ± 0.25 7.48 ± 2.37 −0.85 ± 0.18
    0.3–1 10.9 ± 2.94 −1.36 ± 0.18 6.90 ± 1.50 −0.95 ± 0.13
    0.12–0.3 6.82 ± 2.25 −1.31 ± 0.20 4.37 ± 1.18 −0.91 ± 0.14
Mode All 1–10 4.00 ± 0.49 −0.78 ± 0.08 3.07 ± 0.30 −0.55 ± 0.57
    0.3–1 4.45 ± 0.89 −1.26 ± 0.17 2.97 ± 0.45 −0.89 ± 0.12
    0.12–0.3 3.28 ± 0.18 −1.23 ± 0.07 2.56 ± 0.11 −1.00 ± 0.05
  w/o ${r}_{{\rm{e}}}^{\mathrm{Opt}}$ 1–10 10.9 ± 3.94 −1.14 ± 0.25 7.45 ± 2.14 −0.80 ± 0.17
    0.3–1 3.00 ± 0.19 −1.01 ± 0.05 2.15 ± 0.10 −0.71 ± 0.03
    0.12–0.3a

Notes. Columns: (1) Statistics of re. (2) Sample used in the fits for the size evolution. "All" denotes the use of all samples in an ${L}_{\mathrm{UV}}$ bin, and "w/o ${r}_{{\rm{e}}}^{\mathrm{Opt}}$" represents the exclusion of the data points of ${r}_{{\rm{e}}}^{\mathrm{Opt}}$. (3) Bins of ${L}_{\mathrm{UV}}$ in units of ${L}_{z=3}^{*}$. (4) Bz of ${B}_{z}{(1+z)}^{{\beta }_{z}}$. (5) ${\beta }_{z}$ of ${B}_{z}{(1+z)}^{{\beta }_{z}}$. (6) BH of ${B}_{H}h{(z)}^{{\beta }_{H}}$, where $h(z)\equiv H(z)/{H}_{0}=\sqrt{{{\rm{\Omega }}}_{m}{(1+z)}^{3}+{{\rm{\Omega }}}_{{\rm{\Lambda }}}}$. (7) ${\beta }_{H}$ of ${B}_{H}h{(z)}^{{\beta }_{H}}$.

aThe ${\chi }^{2}$ minimization is not converged.

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Table 7.  Summary of the LBG Size Growth Rates from Previous Studies

References Number Redshift Range ${\beta }_{z}$ of ${(1+z)}^{{\beta }_{z}}$ Statistics Size Measurements
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6)
Bouwens et al. (2004) $(2929)$ $2-6$ −1.05 ± 0.21 Average SExtractor
Ferguson et al. (2004) $(773)$ 2–5 $\sim -1.5$ Average SExtractor
Ravindranath et al. (2006) 1333 $(4694)$ 3–5 GALFIT
Hathi et al. (2008a) 61 $(61)$ 3–6 $\sim -1.5$ Average SExtractor
Conselice & Arnold (2009) 583 $(583)$ $4-6$ SExtractor
Oesch et al. (2010) 21 $(21)$ $7-8$ −1.12 ± 0.17 Average SExtractor, GALFIT
Grazian et al. (2012) $(153)$ 7 SExtractor
Mosleh et al. (2012) $(218)$ $4-7$ −1.20 ± 0.11 Median GALFIT
Huang et al. (2013) 1012 $(1356)$ 4–5 $\sim -1$ Mode SExtractor, GALFIT
Ono et al. (2013) 15 $(81)$ 7–10 $-{1.30}_{-0.14}^{+0.12}$ Average GALFIT
Curtis-Lake et al. (2014) 1318 $(3738)$ 4–9 −0.31 ± 0.26 Mode SExtractor
Holwerda et al. (2014) 8 $(8)$ 9–10 −1.0 ± 0.1 Average GALFIT
Kawamata et al. (2014) a 39 $(39)$ 6–8 −1.24 ± 0.1 Average glafic
This work 4993 $(10454)$ 4–10 −1.10 ± 0.06 Median GALFIT
      −0.95 ± 0.07 Average GALFIT
      −1.26 ± 0.17 Mode GALFIT
incl. Photo-z SFGs 89880 $(312722)$ b $0-6$

Notes. Columns: (1) Reference. (2) Number of galaxies whose size is measured in the reference. The values in parentheses are the number of galaxies in the parent sample. (3) Redshift range for size measurements of LBGs. (4) Best-fit ${\beta }_{z}$ of ${(1+z)}_{z}^{\beta }$ for a bright (${L}_{\mathrm{UV}}\sim 0.3-1\;{L}_{z=3}^{*}$) galaxy sample. (5) Statistics for deriving a representative re at a redshift. "Mode" corresponds to the peak of the size distribution derived by fitting with a log-normal function (Equation (5)). (6) Method or software used to measure galaxy sizes.

aSample galaxies are selected in a field of a galaxy cluster. This study corrects for the gravitational lensing effects of magnification and shear with their mass model. bThe value is the total number of SFGs whose sizes are well measured in ${r}_{{\rm{e}}}^{\mathrm{Opt}}$ and ${r}_{{\rm{e}}}^{\mathrm{UV}}$. See Table 2.

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Most previous studies have employed average values for representative re. However, Figure 7 indicates that the median measurements trace the typical galaxy sizes parameterized by $\bar{{r}_{{\rm{e}}}}$ better than the average values do. Because the small samples of $z\gtrsim 7$ galaxies do not allow us to estimate modal re values, we use median values for our main analyses, unless otherwise specified.

Figure 8 compares the re values of SFGs and LBGs at $z\sim 4-6$ with a bright UV luminosity. In any statistics choice, we find that the re values of SFGs and LBGs are comparable within a scatter of $\lesssim 30$%. These results indicate that star-forming galaxies selected by photo-z and dropout techniques statistically give similar re values and that the bias from the different selection techniques is as small as $\lesssim 30$% in the re determination.

5. RESULTS

5.1. Sérsic Index

The Sérsic index represents the SB profiles of galaxies. A high n means a cuspier SB distribution, indicating the existence of a central bulge. On the other hand, a lower n suggests a disk-like light profile with a flatter SB distribution at the central galactic region. The Sérsic index depends on observed wave bands and stellar populations (e.g., color), which have been revealed by detailed structural analyses with multiple passbands for local galaxies (e.g., Häußler et al. 2013; Vika et al. 2013, 2014). Vulcani et al. (2014) have reported that n tends to be larger in redder bands for blue galaxies because of a bulge component with old stellar ages and or dust attenuation at the central region.

Our results confirm that n values of QGs are significantly higher than those of SFGs at $z\lesssim 2$ in the Redshift-Sersic index right panel of Figure 5. For massive SFGs with $\mathrm{log}{M}_{*}=10-11\;{M}_{\odot }$, n values monotonically increase from $n\sim 1-1.5$ at $z\sim 1$ to $n\sim 2-3$ at $z\sim 0$. The evolutionary trend of n for the massive SFGs is similar to that of the QGs at $z\sim 0-2$, which is consistent with previous results (see the discussions in van Dokkum et al. 2010; Naab et al. 2009; Pastrav et al. 2013).

At $2\lesssim z\lesssim 3$, the n values of the SFGs at the rest-frame optical wavelengths are slightly smaller than those at the rest-frame UV wavelengths by ${\rm{\Delta }}n\lesssim 0.5$, which is similar to the results of Vulcani et al. (2014) for local objects.

Interestingly, in Figure 5, we find that typical SFGs have a value of $n\sim 1-1.5$ at the wide redshift range of $z\sim 1-6$, albeit with the large scatter of individual galaxies. A similar claim is made by, for example, Morishita et al. (2014), but only for $z\sim 1-3$ star-forming galaxies (Figure 5). Our results newly suggest that the typical Sérsic indices of star-forming galaxies are $n\sim 1-1.5$ at $z\sim 3-6$.

This constant n guarantees that we use a fixed n value of 1.5 in the size measurements for LBGs (Section 3).

5.2. Size–Luminosity Relation

We investigate the size–luminosity re${L}_{\mathrm{UV}}$ relation and its dependence on redshift. Figure 9 and Table 8 represent the size–luminosity relation at z = 0–8 for the SFGs and LBGs, where ${L}_{\mathrm{UV}}$ is presented with ${M}_{\mathrm{UV}}$. We cannot examine the size–luminosity relation at $z\sim 10$ because the number of $z\sim 10$ LBGs is only three. A large area of ∼910 arcmin2 in the HST fields allows us to derive the re${L}_{\mathrm{UV}}$ relation in a wide range of magnitude, $-23\lesssim {M}_{\mathrm{UV}}\lesssim -17$ mag, even for $z\sim 4$ LBGs. Figure 9 shows that re has a negative correlation with ${{\rm{M}}}_{\mathrm{UV}}$ at $0\lesssim z\lesssim 8$.

Figure 9.

Figure 9. Effective radius re and UV magnitude ${M}_{\mathrm{UV}}$ relation at $z\sim 0-8$. The top, middle, and bottom panels represent ${r}_{{\rm{e}}}^{\mathrm{Opt}}$ and ${r}_{{\rm{e}}}^{\mathrm{UV}}$ for the star-forming galaxies and ${r}_{{\rm{e}}}^{\mathrm{UV}}$ for the LBGs, respectively. The redshifts for the relations are labeled at the top of the panels. The red lines denote the best-fit power-law functions of ${r}_{{\rm{e}}}\propto {L}_{\mathrm{UV}}{\;}^{\alpha }$ for the reM ${}_{\mathrm{UV}}$ relations. The best-fit power law for the $z\sim 0-1$ SFGs are plotted in all panels (dashed lines). The open squares in the bottom panels denote re values obtained with the stacked images of LBGs for the purpose of the cosmological SB dimming effect evaluation (see Section 5.2). The gray points with error bars indicate the median re and the 16th and 84th percentiles of the distribution.

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Table 8.  Size–Luminosity Relation at z = 0–8

${M}_{\mathrm{UV}}$ ${r}_{{\rm{e}}}^{\mathrm{Opt}}$ ${M}_{\mathrm{UV}}$ ${r}_{{\rm{e}}}^{\mathrm{UV}}$ ${M}_{\mathrm{UV}}$ ${r}_{{\rm{e}}}^{\mathrm{UV}}$
(mag) (kpc) (mag) (kpc) (mag) (kpc)
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6)
$z=0-1$ SFGs $z=1-2$ SFGs $z\sim 4$ LBGs
−21.0 ${3.896}_{-2.273}^{+4.513}$ −21.0 ${2.090}_{-1.139}^{+2.847}$ −23.0 ${1.536}_{-0.878}^{+1.041}$
−20.0 ${3.380}_{-1.497}^{+2.036}$ −20.0 ${1.794}_{-0.962}^{+2.418}$ −22.0 ${1.223}_{-0.600}^{+1.100}$
−19.0 ${2.504}_{-1.045}^{+1.566}$ −19.0 ${1.232}_{-0.634}^{+1.464}$ −21.0 ${1.058}_{-0.529}^{+0.841}$
−18.0 ${1.837}_{-0.810}^{+1.234}$ −18.0 ${0.940}_{-0.477}^{+1.056}$ −20.0 ${0.733}_{-0.325}^{+0.638}$
−17.0 ${1.340}_{-0.570}^{+0.983}$ −17.0 ${0.723}_{-0.352}^{+1.016}$ −19.0 ${0.589}_{-0.265}^{+0.510}$
−16.0 ${1.074}_{-0.467}^{+0.791}$ −16.0 ${0.606}_{-0.404}^{+1.108}$ −18.0 ${0.509}_{-0.204}^{+0.468}$
−15.0 ${0.854}_{-0.359}^{+0.680}$ −15.0 ${0.461}_{-0.309}^{+0.398}$ −17.0 ${0.438}_{-0.247}^{+0.325}$
$z=1-2$ SFGs $z=2-3$ SFGs $z\sim 5$ LBGs
−22.0 ${3.035}_{-0.448}^{+0.237}$ −22.0 ${1.428}_{-0.632}^{+1.602}$ −22.0 ${1.025}_{-0.352}^{+1.044}$
−21.0 ${1.958}_{-1.026}^{+2.304}$ −21.0 ${1.443}_{-0.727}^{+1.664}$ −21.0 ${0.788}_{-0.359}^{+0.686}$
−20.0 ${1.982}_{-0.734}^{+1.414}$ −20.0 ${1.076}_{-0.545}^{+1.177}$ −20.0 ${0.595}_{-0.287}^{+0.393}$
−19.0 ${1.360}_{-0.589}^{+1.071}$ −19.0 ${0.813}_{-0.382}^{+0.787}$ −19.0 ${0.519}_{-0.232}^{+0.496}$
−18.0 ${1.113}_{-0.399}^{+0.817}$ −18.0 ${0.685}_{-0.333}^{+0.749}$ −18.0 ${0.506}_{-0.284}^{+0.426}$
−17.0 ${1.028}_{-0.451}^{+0.893}$ −17.0 ${0.509}_{-0.263}^{+0.573}$ −17.0 ${0.356}_{-0.076}^{+0.095}$
−16.0 ${0.937}_{-0.378}^{+1.017}$ $z=3-4$ SFGs $z\sim 6$ LBGs
$z=2-3$ SFGs −22.0 ${1.473}_{-0.705}^{+1.687}$ −22.0 ${1.053}_{-0.696}^{+0.841}$
−21.0 ${2.878}_{-0.908}^{+3.607}$ −21.0 ${1.054}_{-0.495}^{+1.154}$ −21.0 ${0.635}_{-0.274}^{+0.717}$
−20.0 ${1.253}_{-0.098}^{+0.488}$ −20.0 ${0.778}_{-0.374}^{+0.765}$ −20.0 ${0.565}_{-0.287}^{+0.400}$
−19.0 ${1.066}_{-0.710}^{+0.543}$ −19.0 ${0.620}_{-0.278}^{+0.538}$ −19.0 ${0.584}_{-0.327}^{+0.424}$
−18.0 ${1.625}_{-0.997}^{+9.075}$ −18.0 ${0.572}_{-0.269}^{+0.577}$ −18.0 ${0.371}_{-0.198}^{+0.222}$
$z=4-5$ SFGs $z\sim 7$ LBGs
−22.0 ${1.081}_{-0.436}^{+1.082}$ −21.0 ${0.737}_{-0.421}^{+0.320}$
−21.0 ${0.892}_{-0.427}^{+0.769}$ −20.0 ${0.489}_{-0.268}^{+0.956}$
−20.0 ${0.708}_{-0.354}^{+0.703}$ −19.0 ${0.467}_{-0.207}^{+0.572}$
−19.0 ${0.444}_{-0.302}^{+0.362}$ $z\sim 8$ LBGs
$z=5-6$ SFGs −21.0 ${0.419}_{-0.262}^{+1.981}$
−22.0 ${0.975}_{-0.425}^{+3.757}$ −20.0 ${0.425}_{-0.173}^{+1.331}$
−21.0 ${0.716}_{-0.286}^{+0.674}$ −19.0 ${0.243}_{-0.068}^{+0.225}$
−20.0 ${0.678}_{-0.328}^{+0.756}$ −18.0 ${0.356}_{-0.218}^{+1.194}$

Note. Columns: (1), (3), (5) UV magnitude. (2), (4), (6) Median effective radius at the rest-frame optical or UV wavelength. The lower and upper limits indicate the 16th and 84th percentiles of the re distribution, respectively.

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The re${L}_{\mathrm{UV}}$ relation is fitted by

Equation (6)

where r0 and α are free parameters. The r0 value represents the effective radius at a luminosity of L0, which is similar to the parameter γ used in, for example, Newman et al. (2012). The α value is the slope of the re${L}_{\mathrm{UV}}$ relation. We select L0 to the best-fit Schechter parameter M* at $z\sim 3$ that corresponds to ${M}_{\mathrm{UV}}=-21.0$, following the arguments of Huang et al. (2013).

The left panel of Figure 10 shows the redshift evolution of r0 and α. We parameterize the size growth rate by fitting r0 with a function of ${B}_{z}{(1+z)}^{{\beta }_{z}}$. The best-fit function is $6.9{(1+z)}^{-1.20\pm -0.04}$ kpc, which does not significantly change even with and without the ${r}_{{\rm{e}}}^{\mathrm{Opt}}$ results. We also carry out fitting with a function of ${B}_{H}h{(z)}^{{\beta }_{H}}$, where BH and ${\beta }_{H}$ are free parameters and $h(z)\equiv H/{H}_{0}=\sqrt{{{\rm{\Omega }}}_{m}{(1+z)}^{3}+{{\rm{\Omega }}}_{{\rm{\Lambda }}}}$. Here the fitting of the h(z)-form functions are conducted because these h(z)-form functions could be a more realistic physical treatment, as claimed by, for example, van der Wel et al. (2014). The fitting results yield the best-fit function of $5.3\;h{(z)}^{-0.97\pm 0.04}$ kpc that is plotted in the left panel of Figure 10. Although we do not use the re estimate of $z\sim 10$ for the fitting, the $z\sim 10$ data point is placed on the extrapolation of the best-fit function.

Figure 10.

Figure 10. Results of power-law fits for the reM ${}_{\mathrm{UV}}$ relation in Figure 9. The red, cyan, and blue filled circles indicate estimates of r0 and α based on ${r}_{{\rm{e}}}^{\mathrm{Opt}}$ and ${r}_{{\rm{e}}}^{\mathrm{UV}}$ for the star-forming galaxies and ${r}_{{\rm{e}}}^{\mathrm{UV}}$ for the LBGs, respectively. (Left) Effective radius r0 at ${L}_{\mathrm{UV}}=1\;{L}_{z=3}^{*}$ corresponding to ${M}_{\mathrm{UV}}=-21$. The thin dashed, dotted, and thick dashed lines show the best-fit curves with ${(1+z)}^{-1}$, ${(1+z)}^{-1.5}$, and ${(1+z)}^{{\beta }_{z}}$, respectively. The dot-dashed line indicates the fit of ${r}_{{\rm{e}}}\propto H{(z)}^{{\beta }_{H}}$. The best-fit ${\beta }_{z}$ and ${\beta }_{H}$ values are −1.20 ± 0.04 and −0.97 ± 0.04, respectively. (Right) Slope α of ${r}_{{\rm{e}}}\propto {L}_{\mathrm{UV}}{\;}^{\alpha }$ as a function of redshift. The thick dashed and thin gray lines denote the weighted-average value with a $1\sigma $ error, $\alpha =0.27\pm 0.01$. The open symbols show α for the SFGs or the LBGs in the literature (open squares assuming Equation (2): van der Wel et al. 2014; open circles: Curtis-Lake et al. 2014; open diamonds: Huang et al. 2013; cross: Jiang et al. 2013; open triangle: Grazian et al. 2012). The gray filled symbols represent the results for local spiral and or disk galaxies (filled triangle and inverse triangle: $n\lt 2.5$ galaxies with r-band magnitudes of ${M}_{r}\leqslant -20.91$ and ${M}_{r}\geqslant -20.91$, respectively, in Shen et al. 2003; filled circle: Courteau et al. 2007; filled square: de Jong & Lacey 2000).

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The evolution of r0 is similar to those of the median re values that are presented in Figure 8. Here we plot re as a function of redshift in Figure 11, which is the same as Figure 8, but for the median re values of three different UV luminosity samples. We fit the functions and find that the best-fit ${\beta }_{z}$ are −1.22 ± 0.05, −1.10 ± 0.06, and −0.84 ± 0.11 in ${L}_{\mathrm{UV}}/{L}_{z=3}^{*}=0.12-0.3,0.3-1$, and 1–10, respectively (Table 6). The best-fit ${\beta }_{z}$ values are comparable to the one of r0.

Figure 11.

Figure 11. Redshift evolution of median re in different ${L}_{\mathrm{UV}}$ bins, 0.12–0.3 (left), 0.3–1 (center), and 1–10 (right) ${L}_{\mathrm{UV}}/{L}_{z=3}^{*}$. The definitions of the symbols and lines are the same as those in Figure 10. The data points are slightly shifted along the x axis for clarity.

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In contrast to the re evolution, there is no significant evolution of α (Equation (6)) at z = 0–8 found in the right panel of Figure 10. We calculate the weighted-average value of α with our data points over z = 0–8 and obtain $\alpha =0.27\pm 0.01$. Figure 10 compares the α estimates of z = 0–8 obtained in the previous studies. The α measurements of local spiral and or disk galaxies are comparable to $\alpha \sim 0.27$ (de Jong & Lacey 2000; Shen et al. 2003; Courteau et al. 2007). At $z=0-3$, van der Wel et al. (2014) have revealed that the slopes of the size–stellar mass relations do not evolve. Adopting Equation (2) to calculate ${L}_{\mathrm{UV}}$ from the stellar masses, we obtain the re${L}_{\mathrm{UV}}$ relation and evolution similar to our results. At $z\gt 4$, there are several α measurements reported by Curtis-Lake et al. (2014), Huang et al. (2013), Jiang et al. (2013), and Grazian et al. (2012). However, these data points of α are largely scattered (the right panel of Figure 10). Nevertheless, our α values fall within the scatter of the previous measurements.

Our results of the re (or r0) evolution and the constant α suggest that the re${L}_{\mathrm{UV}}$ relation of star-forming galaxies is unchanged but with a decreasing offset of re from z = 0 to 8. Because the morphological evolution trend of star-forming galaxies is simple, our results are a benefit to studies using Monte Carlo simulations for luminosity function determinations that require an assumption of high-z galaxy sizes (e.g., Ishigaki et al. 2014; Oesch et al. 2014). Moreover, these morphological evolution trends are important constraints on the parameters of galaxy-formation models.

Note that there is a possible source of systematics given by the cosmological SB dimming effect by which we would underestimate re (Section 3). To estimate the effect of the cosmological SB dimming, we measure the re of $z\sim 4-8$ LBGs with stacked images that accomplish the detection limit deeper than the individual images by a factor of $\sim 20-30$. The re values measured in the stacked images roughly reproduce the size–luminosity relation of Figure 9, suggesting that there are no signatures of systematics in the re values measured by our GALFIT profile fitting technique. There is another possibility of the cosmological SB dimming effect. If a large population of diffuse high-z galaxies exists that are not identified in our HST images, we would underestimate the re values. However, it is unlikely that such a diffuse high-z population exists. This is because the luminosity functions of $z\sim 4-6$ LBGs derived with HST data agree with those obtained by ground-based observations (Beckwith et al. 2006), whose PSF FWHM is $\sim 1\prime\prime $, corresponding to 3–4 kpc in radius at $z\sim 4-6$. In other words, at these redshifts, there is no diffuse population with a radius up to $\sim 3-4$ kpc that is significantly larger than our size measurements of ${r}_{{\rm{e}}}\lesssim 1$ kpc (see, e.g., Figure 6). We therefore conclude that our results of size measurements are not significantly changed by the cosmological SB dimming effect.

5.3. SFR Surface Density

We examine the redshift evolution of SFR SD ${{\rm{\Sigma }}}_{\mathrm{SFR}}$. Figure 12 shows ${{\rm{\Sigma }}}_{\mathrm{SFR}}$ as a function of redshift. Figure 12 is the same as Figure 5, but for all of our galaxies up to z = 8 with the binning of ${L}_{\mathrm{UV}}$ values. Figure 12 shows that ${{\rm{\Sigma }}}_{\mathrm{SFR}}$ gradually increases by redshift from $z\sim 0$ to 8. This evolutional trend and the ${{\rm{\Sigma }}}_{\mathrm{SFR}}$ values are consistent with those of $z\sim 4-8$ previously reported by, for example, Oesch et al. (2010) and Ono et al. (2013). Our results of the ${{\rm{\Sigma }}}_{\mathrm{SFR}}$ evolution suggest that the ${{\rm{\Sigma }}}_{\mathrm{SFR}}$ of typical high-z galaxies continuously increases from $z\sim 0$ to 8.

Figure 12.

Figure 12. SFR SD ${{\rm{\Sigma }}}_{\mathrm{SFR}}$ as a function of redshift. The definitions of the symbols are the same as those in Figure 10. The large, medium, and small circles denote ${{\rm{\Sigma }}}_{\mathrm{SFR}}$ in the ${L}_{\mathrm{UV}}$ bins of 1–10, 0.3–1, and 0.12–0.3 ${L}_{\mathrm{UV}}/{L}_{z=3}^{*}$, respectively. The filled circles are the same as in Figure 10. The SFR for the LBGs is corrected for dust extinction with the two relations of ${M}_{\mathrm{UV}}$β (Bouwens et al. 2014a) and IRX–β (Meurer et al. 1999). The dashed gray lines represent the ${{\rm{\Sigma }}}_{\mathrm{SFG}}$ evolution calculated with an SFR of $10\;{M}_{\odot }\;{\mathrm{yr}}^{-1}$ and the best-fit r0 curve in Figure 10. The open symbols are taken from the literature on LBGs (triangles: Ono et al. 2013; inverse triangles: Oesch et al. 2010). The error bars denote the 16th and 84th percentiles of distribution. The data points are slightly shifted along the x axis for clarity.

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In Figure 12, we also find that the increase rate per redshift becomes small at $z\gtrsim 4$ in the regime of $\mathrm{log}{{\rm{\Sigma }}}_{\mathrm{SFR}}\sim 0.5-1\;{M}_{\odot }$ yr−1 kpc−2. We obtain the ${{\rm{\Sigma }}}_{\mathrm{SFR}}$ evolution curve using  Equation (3) with the inputs of the best-fit function ${r}_{0}=6.9{(1+z)}^{-1.20\pm -0.04}$ (Section 5.2) and the SFR estimated from the ${L}_{\mathrm{UV}}$ value via Equation (4). Figure 12 presents the ${{\rm{\Sigma }}}_{\mathrm{SFR}}$ evolution curve. As expected, the ${{\rm{\Sigma }}}_{\mathrm{SFR}}$ evolution curve follows the ${{\rm{\Sigma }}}_{\mathrm{SFR}}$ data points. In other words, the slow ${{\rm{\Sigma }}}_{\mathrm{SFR}}$ evolution at $z\gtrsim 4$ is explained by the simple power-law galaxy size evolution of ${r}_{0}=6.9{(1+z)}^{-1.20\pm -0.04}$.

In Figure 13, we examine the dependence of ${{\rm{\Sigma }}}_{\mathrm{SFR}}$ on SFR and M*. The left and right panels of Figure 13 show ${{\rm{\Sigma }}}_{\mathrm{SFR}}$ as functions of SFR and M*, respectively. For comparison, we also plot SDSS galaxies with an exponential SB profile in Lackner & Gunn (2012) and the Milky Way (Kennicutt & Evans 2012). These local galaxies are placed in the regime of low ${{\rm{\Sigma }}}_{\mathrm{SFR}}$ values. Obviously, Figure 13 reproduces the result of Figure 12 that ${{\rm{\Sigma }}}_{\mathrm{SFR}}$ is typically higher for high-z galaxies than for low-z galaxies. In the ${{\rm{\Sigma }}}_{\mathrm{SFR}}$–SFR diagram of Figure 13, ${{\rm{\Sigma }}}_{\mathrm{SFR}}$ positively correlates with SFR. This is because the ${{\rm{\Sigma }}}_{\mathrm{SFR}}$ and SFR values are related by Equation (3). The slopes of the ${{\rm{\Sigma }}}_{\mathrm{SFR}}$–SFR relation appear similar at z ∼ 2–8. On the other hand, we find that the ${{\rm{\Sigma }}}_{\mathrm{SFR}}$M* diagram of Figure 13 shows no strong dependence of ${{\rm{\Sigma }}}_{\mathrm{SFR}}$ on M* (see also, e.g., Wuyts et al. 2011). These two diagrams suggest that ${{\rm{\Sigma }}}_{\mathrm{SFR}}$ increases toward high z, keeping the similar ${{\rm{\Sigma }}}_{\mathrm{SFR}}$–SFR and ${{\rm{\Sigma }}}_{\mathrm{SFR}}$M* relations over z ∼ 2–8.

Figure 13.

Figure 13. SFR SD ${{\rm{\Sigma }}}_{\mathrm{SFR}}$ as functions of SFR (left) and stellar mass (right). The small magenta and cyan circles indicate median ${{\rm{\Sigma }}}_{\mathrm{SFR}}$ values at a given SFR or M* for the SFGs at $z\sim 2$ and $z\sim 4$, respectively, based on ${r}_{{\rm{e}}}^{\mathrm{UV}}$. The large circles represent the LBGs at $z\sim 4$ (cyan), $z\sim 6$ (green), and $z\sim 8$ (dark blue). The dark-blue points denote individual LBGs at $z=7-8$. The SFR for the LBGs is corrected for dust extinction with the two relations of ${M}_{\mathrm{UV}}$β (Bouwens et al. 2014a) and IRX–β (Meurer et al. 1999). The square represents the Milky Way (Kennicutt & Evans 2012). The gray dots indicate SDSS galaxies with an exponential SB distribution from a catalog of Lackner & Gunn (2012), whose ${{\rm{\Sigma }}}_{\mathrm{SFR}}$ is calculated from the SFR and re values based on u-band magnitudes and single Sérsic profile fits, respectively. The stellar mass of the SDSS galaxies is taken from Kauffmann et al. (2003), Brinchmann et al. (2004), and Salim et al. (2007). The dashed lines correspond to constant effective radii of ${r}_{{\rm{e}}}=0.1,1,10$ kpc, from top to bottom. The horizontal lines are the weighted-average values of ${{\rm{\Sigma }}}_{\mathrm{SFR}}$ in each redshift bin. The error bars denote the 16th and 84th percentiles of the distribution.

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5.4. Size–UV Slope β Relation

We derive the re–UV slope β relation to investigate the dependence of galaxy sizes on stellar population. The β parameter is defined by ${f}_{\lambda }\propto {\lambda }^{\beta }$, where ${f}_{\lambda }$ is a galaxy spectrum at ∼1500–3000 Å, which is a coarse indicator of the stellar population and extinction of galaxies. A small β means a blue spectral shape, suggesting young stellar ages, low metallicity, and or dust extinction.

For the SFGs, we calculate β via

Equation (7)

where m1700 and m2800 are the total magnitudes at wavelengths of 1700 and 2800 Å in the rest frame, respectively. These magnitudes are taken from the catalog of Skelton et al. (2014). For the $z\sim 4$, 5, and 6 LBGs, we derive β, fitting the function of ${f}_{\lambda }\propto {\lambda }^{\beta }$ to the magnitude sets of ${i}_{775}{I}_{814}{z}_{850}{Y}_{105}{J}_{125}$, ${z}_{850}{Y}_{105}{J}_{125}{H}_{160}$, and ${Y}_{105}{J}_{125}{H}_{160}$, respectively, in the same manner as Bouwens et al. (2014a). For the $z\sim 7$ and 8 LBGs, we estimate β using

Equation (8)

Equation (9)

Figure 14 represents the reβ relation in the bin of ${L}_{\mathrm{UV}}/{L}_{z=3}^{*}=0.3-1$. We find that the ${L}_{\mathrm{UV}}$–beta relation is poorly determined for the $z\sim 8$ LBGs, due to the small statistics, and the $z\sim 8$ result is not presented. In Figure 14, we identify clear trends that smaller galaxies have a bluer UV spectral shape at $0\lesssim z\lesssim 7$. This is consistent with the results of z ∼ 6–8 LBGs reported by Kawamata et al. (2014). This reβ correlation indicates that young and forming galaxies typically have a small size. We find a negative correlation between re and β for the $z=5-6$ SFGs. The negative correlation trend appears to be simply due to the small sample, which is not statistically significant.

Figure 14.

Figure 14. Relation between effective radius re and UV slope β for the SFGs and the LBGs with ${L}_{\mathrm{UV}}=0.3-1\;{L}_{z=3}^{*}$. The symbols are the same as in Figure 9. The red lines denote the best-fit power-law functions of ${r}_{{\rm{e}}}\propto {\beta }^{c}$, where c is a free parameter. The $z\sim 8$ relation is not shown here because of the poor statistics.

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6. DISCUSSION

6.1. The re Distribution and SHSR: Implications for Host DM Halos and Disks

Here we investigate the properties of the re distributions in Section 6.1.1 and estimate SHSRs in Section 6.1.2. Combining these results and theoretical models, we discuss the host DM halos and the stellar dynamics in Section 6.1.3.

6.1.1. Log-normal Distribution of re

In Section 4.2, we find that the re distributions of our galaxies are well fitted by the log-normal functions in the wide range of redshift, $z\sim 0-6$, and luminosity.

Figure 15 shows the best-fit ${\sigma }_{\mathrm{ln}{r}_{{\rm{e}}}}$ values as a function of redshift. Size measurement uncertainties ${\sigma }_{\mathrm{ln}{r}_{{\rm{e}}},\mathrm{err}}$ would broaden the width of the re distribution. We estimate typical ${\sigma }_{\mathrm{ln}{r}_{{\rm{e}}},\mathrm{err}}$ in each z and ${L}_{\mathrm{UV}}$ bin. We correct ${\sigma }_{\mathrm{ln}{r}_{{\rm{e}}}}$ for the size measurement uncertainties through ${\sigma }_{\mathrm{ln}{r}_{{\rm{e}}}}={({\sigma }_{\mathrm{ln}{r}_{{\rm{e}}},\mathrm{obs}}{\;}^{2}-{\sigma }_{\mathrm{ln}{r}_{{\rm{e}}},\mathrm{err}}{\;}^{2})}^{0.5}$, where ${\sigma }_{\mathrm{ln}{r}_{{\rm{e}}},\mathrm{obs}}$ is the observed width of the re distribution. We find that ${\sigma }_{\mathrm{ln}{r}_{{\rm{e}}}}$ values fall in the range of $\sim 0.45-0.75$ with no clear evolutional trend at $z\sim 0-6$. Our ${\sigma }_{\mathrm{ln}{r}_{{\rm{e}}}}$ values are slightly larger than the estimates for local disks in de Jong & Lacey (2000), Shen et al. (2003), and Courteau et al. (2007) and for late-type galaxies at $z\sim 0-3$ in van der Wel et al. (2014). These differences would be explained by the choices of the wavelengths for the galaxy size measurements because these previous studies measure galaxy sizes in the rest-frame optical wavelength. In fact, if we change from the rest-frame UV luminosity to optical wavelength sizes for the size distribution, we obtain moderately small ${\sigma }_{\mathrm{ln}{r}_{{\rm{e}}}}$ values. However, differences of ∼20%–30% still remain beyond the error bars in Figure 15. These ∼20%–30% differences are probably explained by the sample and measurement technique differences. We also compare the ${\sigma }_{\mathrm{ln}{r}_{{\rm{e}}}}$ estimates of $z\sim 4-5$ LBGs given by Huang et al. (2013) and find a moderately large difference by a factor of 1.5. However, the scatters of our measurements and the statistical uncertainties in the estimates of Huang et al. (2013)  are too large to conclude on the differences.

Figure 15.

Figure 15. Standard deviation ${\sigma }_{\mathrm{ln}{r}_{{\rm{e}}}}$ of the log-normal re distribution (Equation (5)) as a function of redshift. The colored symbols are the same as in Figure 10, but the large, medium-large, and small circles denote ${\sigma }_{\mathrm{ln}{r}_{{\rm{e}}}}$ in the ${L}_{\mathrm{UV}}$ bins of 1–10, 0.3–1, and 0.12–0.3 ${L}_{\mathrm{UV}}/{L}_{z=3}^{*}$, respectively. The shaded region indicates the width of the λ distribution, ${\sigma }_{\mathrm{ln}\lambda }$, predicted by N-body simulations (e.g., Bullock et al. 2001). The ${\sigma }_{\mathrm{ln}{r}_{{\rm{e}}}}$ value at $z\gtrsim 7$ is not plotted due to the poor statistics. The gray open symbols show ${\sigma }_{\mathrm{ln}{r}_{{\rm{e}}}}$ for SFGs or LBGs in the literature (open squares: van der Wel et al. 2014; open diamonds: Huang et al. 2013). The gray filled symbols represent the results for local spiral or disk galaxies (filled inverse triangle for $n\lt 2.5$ galaxies with ${M}_{r}\geqslant -20.91$: Shen et al. 2003; filled circle: Courteau et al. 2007; filled square: de Jong & Lacey 2000).

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6.1.2. SHSR

We estimate the SHSRs that are defined with the ratio of ${r}_{{\rm{e}}}/{r}_{\mathrm{vir}}$, where ${r}_{\mathrm{vir}}$ is the virial radius of a host DM halo.

The ${r}_{\mathrm{vir}}$ value is calculated by

Equation (10)

where ${{\rm{\Delta }}}_{\mathrm{vir}}=18{\pi }^{2}+82x-39{x}^{2}$ and $x={{\rm{\Omega }}}_{m}(z)-1$ (Bryan & Norman 1998). We obtain the virial mass of a DM halo, ${M}_{\mathrm{vir}}$, from the stellar mass, M*, of individual galaxies by using the relation determined by the abundance-matching analyses (Behroozi et al. 2010, 2013). Figure 16 shows ${r}_{{\rm{e}}}/{r}_{\mathrm{vir}}$ as a function of redshift and its dependence on ${L}_{\mathrm{UV}}$ at $z\sim 0-8$. The $z\sim 10$ data point is omitted because of the small statistics. In Figure 16, we find that ${r}_{{\rm{e}}}/{r}_{\mathrm{vir}}$ is ∼2% for the star-forming galaxies and ∼0.5% for the QGs. Interestingly, the ${r}_{{\rm{e}}}/{r}_{\mathrm{vir}}$ of the star-forming galaxies is almost constant with redshift, albeit with large uncertainties at $z\gtrsim 5$. The no significant evolution of ${r}_{{\rm{e}}}/{r}_{\mathrm{vir}}$ is reported by Kawamata et al. (2014) based on a compilation of data from the literature for star-forming galaxies at $z\gtrsim 2$. Our systematic structural analyses seamlessly confirm the report of no large evolution from $z\sim 0$ with the homogenous data sets and the same analysis technique over the wide redshift range. Figure 16 also indicates that there is no strong dependence of ${r}_{{\rm{e}}}/{r}_{\mathrm{vir}}$ in the wide luminosity range of ${L}_{\mathrm{UV}}\sim 0.12-10{L}_{z=3}^{*}$.

Figure 16.

Figure 16. Median SHSR, ${r}_{{\rm{e}}}/{r}_{\mathrm{vir}}$, as a function of redshift. The colored symbols are the same as in Figure 10, but the large, medium-large, and small circles denote ${r}_{{\rm{e}}}/{r}_{\mathrm{vir}}$ values in the ${L}_{\mathrm{UV}}$ bins of 1–10, 0.3–1, and 0.12–0.3 ${L}_{\mathrm{UV}}/{L}_{z=3}^{*}$, respectively. The horizontal dashed line indicates a weighted mean of $\lt{r}_{{\rm{e}}}/{r}_{\mathrm{vir}}\gt$ in the $0.3-1\;{L}_{\mathrm{UV}}/{L}_{z=3}^{*}$ bin. The red squares denote the QGs with $\mathrm{log}{M}_{*}=10.5-11\;{M}_{\odot }$. The virial mass of host DM halos is derived from the results of Behroozi et al. (2013).

Standard image High-resolution image

We compare our ${r}_{{\rm{e}}}/{r}_{\mathrm{vir}}$ estimates with those of previous studies. Because the previous studies chose different statistics for ${r}_{{\rm{e}}}/{r}_{\mathrm{vir}}$ estimates, we present average, median, and modal ${r}_{{\rm{e}}}/{r}_{\mathrm{vir}}$ for our galaxies with $0.3-1\;{L}_{\mathrm{UV}}/{L}_{z=3}^{*}$ in Figure 17, with the previous results.

Figure 17.

Figure 17. Comparison between our SHSR, ${r}_{{\rm{e}}}/{r}_{\mathrm{vir}}$, and those of previous studies in a bin of $\sim 0.3-1\;{L}_{\mathrm{UV}}/{L}_{z=3}^{*}$. The symbols and lines are the same as those in Figure 8, and we include a measurement for local galaxies with the black filled circle (Kravtsov 2013). The ${r}_{{\rm{e}}}/{r}_{\mathrm{vir}}$ values of the gray symbols are taken from Kawamata et al. (2014), who compiled the results of the literature. The horizontal dashed, solid, and dot-dashed lines indicate weighted means of $\lt{r}_{{\rm{e}}}/{r}_{\mathrm{vir}}\gt$ of average, median, and modal values, respectively. The red, green, and blue shaded areas illustrate the regions of ${j}_{{\rm{d}}}/{m}_{{\rm{d}}}=1.5$, 1.0, and 0.5, respectively (see Section 6.2 for details). A typical error bar in our ${r}_{{\rm{e}}}/{r}_{\mathrm{vir}}$ estimates is shown at $z\sim 0.5$.

Standard image High-resolution image

For local galaxies, Kravtsov (2013) obtain ${r}_{{\rm{e}}}/{r}_{\mathrm{vir}}=1.50\pm 0.07$% by the fitting of size–luminosity relations. This result of z = 0 is consistent with our results at a similar redshift of $z\sim 0.5$ within the $1\sigma $ uncertainty (Figure 17). For high-z galaxies, Kawamata et al. (2014) calculate ${r}_{{\rm{e}}}/{r}_{\mathrm{vir}}$ values with the average statistics. In Figure 17, the gray symbols of Kawamata et al. (2014)ʼs estimates agree with the blue crosses of our results. We find that the results of our and previous studies fall in the ${r}_{{\rm{e}}}/{r}_{\mathrm{vir}}$ range of ${r}_{{\rm{e}}}/{r}_{\mathrm{vir}}=1.0\%-3.5\%,$regardless of statistics choices.

Motivated by the no large evolution of ${r}_{{\rm{e}}}/{r}_{\mathrm{vir}}$, we calculate a $\lt{r}_{{\rm{e}}}/{r}_{\mathrm{vir}}\gt$ that is a ${r}_{{\rm{e}}}/{r}_{\mathrm{vir}}$ value weighted averaged over $z\sim 0-8$. We obtain $\lt{r}_{{\rm{e}}}/{r}_{\mathrm{vir}}\gt=2.76\pm 0.47$%, 1.92 ± 0.09%, and 1.13 ± 0.06% for our ${r}_{{\rm{e}}}/{r}_{\mathrm{vir}}$ estimates of average, median, and modal statistics, respectively.

The $\lt{r}_{{\rm{e}}}/{r}_{\mathrm{vir}}\gt$ value from our average statistics results is in good agreement with that of Kawamata et al. (2014): 3.3 ± 0.1%.

6.1.3. DM Halo and Stellar Disk

Summarizing our observational findings for star-forming galaxies in Sections 6.1.1 and 6.1.2, we identify, over cosmic time of $z\sim 0-6$, that the re distribution is well represented by log-normal distributions, that the standard deviation is ${\sigma }_{\mathrm{ln}{r}_{{\rm{e}}}}\sim 0.45-0.75$, and that the SHSR is almost constant, ∼2%. It is interesting to compare these observational results with the theoretical predictions of the spin parameter λ distribution of host dark halos. DM N-body simulations suggest that λ follows a log-normal distribution with the standard deviation of ${\sigma }_{\mathrm{ln}\lambda }\sim 0.5-0.6$ (e.g., Barnes & Efstathiou 1987; Warren et al. 1992; Bullock et al. 2001). The shape and the standard deviation of the λ distributions are very similar to those of re. These similarities support an idea that galaxy sizes of stellar components would be related to the host DM halo kinematics. Our study has obtained this hint of a reλ relation at a wide range of redshift, $z\sim 0-6$, that complements the previous similar claim made for $z\lesssim 3$ galaxies (van der Wel et al. 2014).

If re values are really determined by λ as indicated by the re distribution properties, stellar components of the high-z star-forming galaxies have dominant rotational motions that form stellar disks. In fact, according to disk-formation models (e.g., Fall & Efstathiou 1980; Fall 1983, 2002; Mo et al. 1998), gas receives the specific angular momentum from host DM halos through tidal interactions that make a constant SHSR similar to the one found in Section 6.1.2.

Moreover, in Section 5.1, we find that typical high-z star-forming galaxies have a low Sérsic index of $n\sim 1.5$ at $z\sim 0-6$. The combination of the log-normal re distribution, the reλ standard deviation similarity, and the low Sérsic index suggests a picture in which typical high-z star-forming galaxies have stellar components similar to disks in stellar dynamics and morphology over cosmic time of $z\sim 0-6$.

6.2. Specific Disk Angular Momentum Inferred from the Observations and Models

As we discuss in Section 6, a number of observational results suggest that typical high-z star-forming galaxies have disk-like stellar components in dynamics and morphology at $z\sim 0-6$. Thus we compare our results with the disk-formation model of Mo et al. (1998):

Equation (11)

where 1.678 is a coefficient for converting the scale length of the exponential disk ${R}_{{\rm{d}}}$ to re. The ${j}_{{\rm{d}}}$ (${m}_{{\rm{d}}}$) value is an angular momentum (mass) ratio of a central disk to a host DM halo. The ${f}_{c}({c}_{\mathrm{vir}})$ and ${f}_{{\rm{R}}}(\lambda ,{c}_{\mathrm{vir}},{m}_{{\rm{d}}},{j}_{{\rm{d}}})$ are functions related to halo and baryon concentrations, respectively. The ${c}_{\mathrm{vir}}$ is the halo concentration factor. The full functional forms of ${f}_{c}({c}_{\mathrm{vir}})$ and ${f}_{{\rm{R}}}(\lambda ,{c}_{\mathrm{vir}},{m}_{{\rm{d}}},{j}_{{\rm{d}}})$ are found in Mo et al. (1998). The SHSR ${r}_{{\rm{e}}}/{r}_{\mathrm{vir}}$ with a fixed ${j}_{{\rm{d}}}/{m}_{{\rm{d}}}$ shows little or no dependence on ${m}_{{\rm{d}}}$ and ${j}_{{\rm{d}}}$. If we use λ and ${c}_{\mathrm{vir}}$ values well constrained by numerical simulations (e.g., Vitvitska et al. 2002; Davis & Natarajan 2009; Prada et al. 2012), we can constrain ${j}_{{\rm{d}}}/{m}_{{\rm{d}}}$.

Figure 17 presents ${r}_{{\rm{e}}}/{r}_{\mathrm{vir}}$ regions corresponding to ${j}_{{\rm{d}}}/{m}_{{\rm{d}}}=0.5$, 1.0, and 1.5. To determine these regions, we randomly change the λ and ${c}_{\mathrm{vir}}$ values within the $\lambda =0.038-0.045$ (Vitvitska et al. 2002; Davis & Natarajan 2009) and ${c}_{\mathrm{vir}}$ ranges at $\mathrm{log}{M}_{\mathrm{vir}}=11-13\;{M}_{\odot }$ in Figure 12 of Prada et al. (2012), respectively. We also assume the conservative range of $0.05\leqslant {m}_{{\rm{d}}}\leqslant 0.1$ (e.g., Mo et al. 1998). Substituting these numbers and our results of ${r}_{{\rm{e}}}/{r}_{\mathrm{vir}}$ (Section 6.1.2) into Equation (11), we obtain ${j}_{{\rm{d}}}/{m}_{{\rm{d}}}=0.7-0.8$. Note that our estimates of ${r}_{{\rm{e}}}/{r}_{\mathrm{vir}}$ fall in ${j}_{{\rm{d}}}/{m}_{{\rm{d}}}\sim 0.5-1$ at $z\sim 0-8$, regardless of the statistical choices (Figure 17).

This result of ${j}_{{\rm{d}}}/{m}_{{\rm{d}}}\sim 0.5-1$ indicates that a central galaxy acquires more than half of the specific angular momentum from a host DM halo. Our ${j}_{{\rm{d}}}/{m}_{{\rm{d}}}$ values are comparable to the estimates with kinematical data for nearby disks (${j}_{{\rm{d}}}/{m}_{{\rm{d}}}\sim 0.8$; Romanowsky & Fall 2012; Fall & Romanowsky 2013). Moreover, Genel et al. (2015) predict ${j}_{{\rm{d}}}/{m}_{{\rm{d}}}\sim 1$ for $z\sim 0$ late-type galaxies with the Illustris simulations (Genel et al. 2014; Vogelsberger et al. 2014a, 2014b). These independent studies for $z\sim 0$ galaxies confirm that our estimate of ${j}_{{\rm{d}}}/{m}_{{\rm{d}}}\sim 0.5-1$ is correct at $z\sim 0$ and suggest that the conclusion of no significant evolution of ${j}_{{\rm{d}}}/{m}_{{\rm{d}}}$ over $z\sim 0-8$ would be reliable. Genel et al. (2015) have revealed that galactic winds with high mass-loading factors (active galactic nucleus feedback) enhance (suppress) ${j}_{{\rm{d}}}/{m}_{{\rm{d}}}$. This suggests that the no significant evolution of ${j}_{{\rm{d}}}/{m}_{{\rm{d}}}$ at $0\lesssim z\lesssim 8$ would place important constraints on parameters of galaxy feedback models.

In Section 6.1.2, we obtain that the SHSR of QGs is ∼0.5%, which is about four times smaller than that of star-forming galaxies. If we naively assume that QGs follow Equation (11) with one-fourth of the specific angular momentum of the star-forming galaxies, we obtain ${j}_{{\rm{d}}}/{m}_{{\rm{d}}}\sim 0.1-0.25$. This value is comparable to ${j}_{{\rm{d}}}/{m}_{{\rm{d}}}\sim 0.1$ for nearby ellipticals in Fall & Romanowsky (2013) and ${j}_{{\rm{d}}}/{m}_{{\rm{d}}}\sim 0.3$ for $z\sim 0$ early-type galaxies predicted in Genel et al. (2015). This small specific angular momentum of QGs would be explained by the loss of angular momentum via dynamical friction during merger events and or weak feedback (e.g., Scannapieco et al. 2008; Zavala et al. 2008).

6.3. Clumpy Structures of High-z Star-forming Galaxies

Our study has shown a wide variety of morphological measurement results, supplemented by the theoretical models. It should be noted that these results are based on the structural analyses for major stellar components of the galaxies because we mask substructures such as star-forming clumps (e.g., Guo et al. 2014; Murata et al. 2014; Tadaki et al. 2014) in our analyses. The signatures of the morphological variety could emerge in dispersions of internal colors and SB profiles in recent structural analyses at $z\sim 2-3$ (e.g., Boada et al. 2015; Morishita et al. 2015). Moreover, we find that the SFR SD, ${{\rm{\Sigma }}}_{\mathrm{SFR}}$, increases toward high z in Figures 12 and 13. This fact suggests that star-forming galaxies at high z would tend to have a high gas mass density if we assume the Kennicutt–Schmidt law (Kennicutt 1998b). The gas-rich disks may enhance the formation of star-forming clumps through the process of disk instabilities (e.g., Genzel et al. 2011). The detailed analyses and results for the clumpy stellar subcomponents are presented in paper II (T. Shibuya et al. 2015, in preparation).

7. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS

We study redshift evolution of re and the size-relevant physical quantities such as Sérsic index n, re distribution, ${r}_{{\rm{e}}}/{r}_{\mathrm{vir}}$, and the ${r}_{{\rm{e}}}-{L}_{\mathrm{UV}}$ relation using the galaxy samples at z = 0–10 made with the deep extragalactic legacy data of HST. The HST samples consist of 176,152 galaxies with a photo-z at z = 0–6 from the 3D-HST+CANDELS catalog and $10,454$ LBGs at z = 4–10 selected in CANDELS, HUDF 09/12, and parallel fields of HFF, which are the largest samples ever used for studies of galaxy size evolution in the wide redshift range of z = 0–10. Our systematic size analyses with the large samples allow us to measure galaxy sizes by the same technique and to evaluate the biases of morphological K correction, statistics choices, and galaxy selection as well as the cosmic SB dimming. Using our galaxies at $z\sim 2-3$, we confirm that these biases are small, $\lesssim 30$%, in the statistical sense for star-forming galaxies at high z, and do not change our conclusions on size evolution.

Our findings in this study are as follows.

  • 1.  
    The best-fit Sérsic index shows a low value of $n\sim 1.5$ for the star-forming galaxies at $z\sim 0-6$. The low n values indicate that a typical star-forming galaxy has a disk-like SB profile.
  • 2.  
    We derive the re${L}_{\mathrm{UV}}$ relation for star-forming galaxies over the wide redshift range of z = 0–8. The power-law fitting of ${r}_{{\rm{e}}}={r}_{0}{({L}_{\mathrm{UV}}/{L}_{0})}^{\alpha }$ reveals that r0 values significantly decrease toward high z. Similar to the evolution of r0, the average, median, and modal re values in the linear space clearly decrease from $z\sim 0$ to $z\sim 6$. The re values in any statistics evolve with ${r}_{{\rm{e}}}\propto {(1+z)}^{-1.0\sim -1.3}$. The slope α of the relation has a constant value of $\alpha =-0.27\pm 0.01$ at $0\lesssim z\lesssim 8$, providing an important constraint for galaxy evolution models.
  • 3.  
    The SFR SD, ${{\rm{\Sigma }}}_{\mathrm{SFR}}$, increases from $z\sim 0$ to $z\sim 8$, whereas we find no stellar-mass dependence of ${{\rm{\Sigma }}}_{\mathrm{SFR}}$ in this redshift range. The increase of ${{\rm{\Sigma }}}_{\mathrm{SFR}}$ suggests that high-z star-forming galaxies would have a gas mass density higher than low-z star-forming galaxies on average, if one assumes that the Kennicutt–Schmidt law does not evolve significantly by redshift.
  • 4.  
    We identify a clear positive correlation between re and β for star-forming galaxies at $z\sim 0-7$ in the luminosity range of $0.3-1.0\;{L}_{z=3}^{*}$. This is explained by a simple picture in which galaxies with young stellar ages and or low metal+dust contents typically have a small size.
  • 5.  
    The re distribution of UV-bright star-forming galaxies is well represented by log-normal functions. The standard deviation of the log-normal re distribution ${\sigma }_{\mathrm{ln}{r}_{{\rm{e}}}}$ is $\sim 0.45-0.75$, and ${\sigma }_{\mathrm{ln}{r}_{{\rm{e}}}}$ does not significantly change at $z\sim 0-6$. Note that the structure formation models predict that the distribution of a DM spin parameter λ follows a log-normal distribution with the λ-distribution's standard deviation of ${\sigma }_{\mathrm{ln}\lambda }\sim 0.5-0.6$. The distribution shapes and standard deviations of re and λ are similar, supporting an idea that galaxy sizes of stellar components could be related to the host DM halo kinematics.
  • 6.  
    Combining our stellar re measurements with host DM halo radii, ${r}_{\mathrm{vir}}$, estimated from the abundance-matching study of Behroozi et al., we obtain a nearly constant value of ${r}_{{\rm{e}}}/{r}_{\mathrm{vir}}=1.0\%-3.5$% at $0\lesssim z\lesssim 6$ in any of the statistical choices of average, median, and mode.
  • 7.  
    The combination of the log-normal re distribution with ${\sigma }_{\mathrm{ln}{r}_{{\rm{e}}}}\sim 0.45-0.75$ and the low Sérsic index suggests a picture in which the typical high-z star-forming galaxies have stellar components similar to disks in stellar dynamics and morphology over cosmic time of $z\sim 0-6$. If we assume the disk-formation model of Mo et al. (1998), our ${r}_{{\rm{e}}}/{r}_{\mathrm{vir}}$ estimates indicate that a central galaxy acquires more than half of its specific angular momentum from its host DM halo, ${j}_{{\rm{d}}}/{m}_{{\rm{d}}}\simeq 0.5-1$.

These results are based on the major stellar components of galaxies because we mask galaxy substructures such as star-forming clumps in our analyses. The detailed analyses and results for the clumpy stellar subcomponents are presented in paper II (T. Shibuya 2015, in preparation). We expect that future facilities such as the James-Webb Space Telescope, the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope, the Wide-field Imaging Surveyor for High-redshift telescope, and 30 m telescopes will obtain deep near-infrared images with a high spatial resolution, a PSF FHWM of $\lesssim 0\buildrel{\prime\prime}\over{.} 1-0\buildrel{\prime\prime}\over{.} 2$, for a large number of galaxies at $z\sim 10$ and beyond. Surveys with these facilities will reveal when the size–luminosity relation emerges and whether the first galaxies fall within the extrapolation of the re evolution and the nearly constant relation of ${r}_{{\rm{e}}}/{r}_{\mathrm{vir}}=1.0\%-3.5$% at $z\sim 0-8$ and 0–6, respectively, that we find in this study.

We thank the anonymous referee for constructive comments and suggestions. We would like to thank Anahita Alavi, Steven Bamford, Rychard J. Bouwens, Marcella C. Carollo, Emma Curtis-Lake, Michael Fall, Ryota Kawamata, Chervin Laporte, Z. Cemile Marsan, Andrew Newman, Carlo Nipoti, Tomoki Saito, Kazuhiro Shimasaku, Genel Shy, Ignacio Trujillo, Masayuki Umemura, Arjen van der Wel, and Suraphong Yuma for their encouragement and useful discussion and comments. We thank Yoshiaki Ono for kindly providing us a part of the HUDF 09-P1 and P2 images. This work is based on observations taken by the 3D-HST Treasury Program (GO 12177 and 12328) and CANDELS Multi-Cycle Treasury Program with the NASA/ESA HST, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under NASA contract NAS5-26555. Support for this work was provided by NASA through an award issued by JPL/Caltech. This work was supported by World Premier International Research Center Initiative (WPI Initiative), MEXT, Japan, KAKENHI (23244025) and (21244013) Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (A) through Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS), and an Advanced Leading Graduate Course for Photon Science grant.

Facilities: HST (ACS - , WFC3) - .

Footnotes

  • We make use of z850 for GOODS-North that has not been taken with the I814 band.

  • In Figure 4, we find that the scatters of $({r}_{{\rm{e}}}^{\mathrm{UV}}-{r}_{{\rm{e}}}^{\mathrm{Opt}})/{r}_{{\rm{e}}}^{\mathrm{Opt}}$ are comparably large in high-mass and low-mass galaxies. Because the scatters originating from statistical errors should be smaller in the high-mass galaxies than in the low-mass galaxies, the scatters of the high-mass galaxies are probably dominated not by statistical errors but by intrinsic re differences.

  • The ${L}_{\mathrm{UV}}$ bins are the same as in previous studies (e.g., Oesch et al. 2010). The LBGs in the faintest ${L}_{\mathrm{UV}}$ bin are only used for the stacking analysis (Section 5.2).

  • 10 

    Because there are only three LBGs at $z\sim 10$, the weighted average re is only derived for our $z\sim 10$ LBGs. Note that the $z\sim 10$ data are presented in Figure 8, but that the data are not used to derive the size evolution function below.

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10.1088/0067-0049/219/2/15