Identifying and Distinguishing Quenching Galaxies with Spatially Resolved Star Formation in Mock CASTOR and NGRST Observations

We present synthetic images of galaxies that are in the stages of star formation quenching for the Cosmological Advanced Survey Telescope for Optical and UV Research (CASTOR) and Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope (NGRST), based on simulations coming from the IllustrisTNG suite, as processed using the stellar population synthesis library galaxev. We account for the effects of dust and various sources of noise to produce mock observations that should mirror real observations. Using these synthetic images, we fit photometric observations in binned circular annuli using FAST++ and a flexible star formation history, and recover well the spatially resolved stellar mass and star formation rate. We thereby measure various indicators (morphological metrics) of spatially resolved star formation activity in the context of galaxy quenching. We find that we are able to distinguish quenching galaxies from a mass-matched control sample of normal star forming galaxies. We additionally find that we can distinguish various quenching mechanisms, where galaxies consistent with an inside-out quenching signature can be separated from galaxies that display an outside-in signature. Using machine learning techniques the accuracy of this classification is reliable, and the progress through the quenching episode can be estimated for the different populations of quenching galaxies. We make predictions for the abundance of the various quenching populations in proposed surveys for CASTOR and NGRST, and find that these surveys will enable the classifications of thousands of quenching galaxies out to intermediate redshifts, and more when considering higher redshifts.