CEERS Key Paper III: The Diversity of Galaxy Structure and Morphology at z=3-9 with JWST
Creators: name: Kartaltepe, Jeyhan S.
name: Rose, Caitlin
name: Vanderhoof, Brittany N.
name: McGrath, Elizabeth J.
name: Costantin, Luca
name: Cox, Isabella G.
name: Yung, L. Y. Aaron
name: Kocevski, Dale D.
name: Wuyts, Stijn
name: Andrews, Henry C. Ferguson Brett H.
name: Bagley, Micaela B.
name: Finkelstein, Steven L.
name: Amorin, Ricardo O.
name: Haro, Pablo Arrabal
name: Backhaus, Bren E.
name: Behroozi, Peter
name: Bisigello, Laura
name: Calabro, Antonello
name: Casey, Caitlin M.
name: Coogan, Rosemary T.
name: Croton, Darren
name: de la Vega, Alexander
name: Dickinson, Mark
name: Cooper, M. C.
name: Fontana, Adriano
name: Franco, Maximilien
name: Grazian, Andrea
name: Grogin, Norman A.
name: Hathi, Nimish P.
name: Holwerda, Benne W.
name: Huertas-Company, Marc
name: Iyer, Kartheik G.
name: Jogee, Shardha
name: Jung, Intae
name: Kewley, Lisa J.
name: Kirkpatrick, Allison
name: Koekemoer, Anton M.
name: Liu, James
name: Lotz, Jennifer M.
name: Lucas, Ray A.
name: Newman, Jeffrey A.
name: Pacifici, Camilla
name: Pandya, Viraj
name: Papovich, Casey
name: Pentericci, Laura
name: Perez-Gonzalez, Pablo G.
name: Petersen, Jayse
name: Pirzkal, Nor
name: Rafelski, Marc
name: Ravindranath, Swara
name: Simons, Raymond C.
name: Snyder, Gregory F.
name: Somerville, Rachel S.
name: Stanway, Elizabeth R.
name: Straughn, Amber N.
name: Tacchella, Sandro
name: Trump, Jonathan R.
name: Vega-Ferrero, Jesus
name: Wilkins, Stephen M.
name: Yang, Guang
name: Zavala, Jorge A.
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2022
Subjects: subject: Astrophysics of Galaxies (astro-ph.GA)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences
subject: FOS: Physical sciences

description: We present a comprehensive analysis of the evolution of the morphological and structural properties of a large sample of galaxies at z=3-9 using early JWST CEERS NIRCam observations. Our sample consists of 850 galaxies at z&gt;3 detected in both CANDELS HST imaging and JWST CEERS NIRCam images to enable a comparison of HST and JWST morphologies. Our team conducted a set of visual classifications, with each galaxy in the sample classified by three different individuals. We also measure quantitative morphologies using the publicly available codes across all seven NIRCam filters. Using these measurements, we present the fraction of galaxies of each morphological type as a function of redshift. Overall, we find that galaxies at z&gt;3 have a wide diversity of morphologies. Galaxies with disks make up a total of 60\% of galaxies at z=3 and this fraction drops to ~30% at z=6-9, while galaxies with spheroids make up ~30-40% across the whole redshift range and pure spheroids with no evidence for disks or irregular features make up ~20%. The fraction of galaxies with irregular features is roughly constant at all redshifts (~40-50%), while those that are purely irregular increases from ~12% to ~20% at z&gt;4.5. We note that these are apparent fractions as many selection effects impact the visibility of morphological features at high redshift. The distributions of Sérsic index, size, and axis ratios show significant differences between the morphological groups. Spheroid Only galaxies have a higher Sérsic index, smaller size, and higher axis ratio than Disk/Irregular galaxies. Across all redshifts, smaller spheroid and disk galaxies tend to be rounder. Overall, these trends suggest that galaxies with established disks and spheroids exist across the full redshift range of this study and further work with large samples at higher redshift is needed to quantify when these features first formed.
description: Accepted for publication to ApJL, 24 pages, 14 figures