The Morphological Diversities Among Star-forming Galaxies at High Redshifts in the Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey (GOODS)

We have used the HST/ACS images to identify 4700 Lyman break galaxies (LBGs) in GOODS. We present the results from a parametric analysis of the 2-D surface brightness profiles, for 1333 LBGs at z > 2.5 with rest-frame UV(1600 Angstrom) AB magnitude < -20.5. Based on the Sersic index, n, which measures the profile shape, we find that about 40% of LBGs at z=3 have light profiles close to exponential, and only 30% have the high concentrations seen for spheroids. About 30% of LBGs appear to have multiple cores or disturbed morphologies suggestive of close pairs or on-going mergers. The fraction of spheroid-like (n > 2.5) LBGs decreases by about 15% from z = 5 to 3. A comparison of LBGs with the starburst galaxies at z = 1.2, shows that the fraction of spheroid-like profiles is about 20% higher among LBGs. The ellipticity distribution for LBGs exhibits a pronounced skew towards high ellipticities (> 0.5), which cannot be explained by morphologies similar to the local disks and spheroids viewed at random orientations. The peak of the distribution evolves toward lower ellipticities, from 0.7 at z = 4 to 0.5 at z = 3. At z = 1.2 the distribution is relatively flat as seen among the present-day galaxies. The dominance of elongated morphologies among LBGs suggests that in a significant fraction of them we may be witnessing star-formation in clumps along gas-rich filaments, or the earliest gas-rich bars that encompass essentially the entire visible galaxy. Similar features are found to be ubiquitous in hydrodynamical simulations in which galaxy formation at high redshifts occurs in filamentary inflows of dynamically cold gas within the dark matter halos, and involves gas- rich mergers.