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arXiv · 2606.11328

Morphology, sizes, and scatter in a large sample of distant quiescent galaxies

G. Scarpe·F. Valentino·K. Ito·M. W. Baker·A. Pensabene·P. Zhu
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Abstract

After quenching galaxies keep growing in size across time, as established in the literature up to cosmic noon. In this work, we assemble one of the largest and most comprehensive multi-wavelength photometric sample of massive quenched galaxies at z>3, counting 137 quiescent candidates within 825 sq. arcmin and redshift 3 3, albeit with a large scatter. This suggests that the commonly used parameters of a Sersic distribution cannot explain the large intrinsic scatter around the stellar mass-size relation, suggesting that other physical quantities need to be taken into account to break the degeneracy between evolution paths across the galaxy population.

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G. Scarpe, F. Valentino, K. Ito, M. W. Baker, A. Pensabene, P. Zhu. 2026-06-09. Morphology, sizes, and scatter in a large sample of distant quiescent galaxies. https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.11328

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