Surface density profiles of GOODS-South galaxies

Accurate stellar mass surface density profiles have been measured for the first time for a complete sample of high-redshift galaxies more massive than 10^10.7^M_{sun}_. The key advantage of this study compared to previous work is that the surface brightness profiles are deconvolved for point-spread function smoothing, allowing accurate measurements of the structure of the galaxies.

The surface brightness profiles account for contributions from complex galaxy structures such as rings and faint outer disks. Mass profiles are derived using radial rest-frame ug color profiles and a well-established empirical relation between these colors and the stellar mass-to-light ratio. We derive stellar half-mass radii from the mass profiles, and find that these are on average ~25% smaller than rest-frame g-band half-light radii.