pop-cosmos: Galaxy size evolution across structural and star-formation classifications in COSMOS-Web

arXiv:2606.28489 · astro-ph.GA, astro-ph.CO · Submitted 2026-06-26 · Read on arXiv

Madalina N. Tudorache, Hiranya V. Peiris, Stephen Thorp, Sinan Deger, Daniel J. Mortlock, Gurjeet Jagwani, Anik Halder, Boris Leistedt, Benedict Van den Bussche, Joel Leja

astro-ph.GA, astro-ph.CO

Submitted: 2026-06-26

Comments: 22 pages, 10 figures, to be submitted to MNRAS

Code: https://github.com/justinalsing/affine

Project page: https://cosmos2025.iap.fr/catalog.html

License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

The gist: Galaxy sizes are correlated with stellar mass and redshift, as characterised by size scaling relations.

Terminology

Abstract

Galaxy sizes are correlated with stellar mass and redshift, as characterised by size scaling relations. The inferred forms of these scaling relations are sensitive to how galaxies are classified -- either by their star formation activity (e.g. specific star-formation rate, sSFR) or by their morphology markers (e.g. bulge-to-total ratio, S' e rsic index). We combine stellar mass and sSFR estimates from pop-cosmos (a generative model trained on COSMOS2020 Spitzer IRAC Ch.1 <26) with size and morphology measurements from COSMOS-Web, obtaining 99,369 galaxies. By investigating the size-mass and the size-redshift relations, we show that: (i) the sSFR/morphology splits give quantitatively different slopes, intercepts, and intrinsic scatter behaviour; (ii) intrinsic scatter depends on structural morphology but not on sSFR, which constrains the galaxy-halo connection; (iii) the quiescent and bulge-dominated size-mass relations both show double-power law breaks, but at different pivot masses, indicating that quenching and structural transformation occur on different time-scales; (iv) the morphology-dependent trends are only recoverable from space-based imaging. Further, the quiescent pivot mass M about 10 10.7 M coincides with the mass scale at which AGN (infrared torus) bolometric luminosity fraction peaks in transitioning galaxies, while the bulge-dominated pivot mass M about 10 11.1 M coincides with the halo mass at which AGN-driven baryonic redistribution peaks, tracing the interval over which AGN feedback ramps from quenching onset to structural transformation.

Sources

Related papers