Authors: McLure et al, 2012
Text: here
The authors in this paper present results from recent observations based on a mass complete (M > 6*10^10 M_sun) high redshift (z~1.4) sample of galaxies. The focus of the paper is
on the sizes of these galaxies and their correlation with other physical properties such as specific star formation (sSFR,) stellar ages and morphology of the galaxies. The paper shows convincingly that galaxies at z~1.4 are more compact then the local counterparts by a factor 1.6 - 2.4 depending on their sSFR. Based on simple toy models they then go on to claim, that the size-evolution is dominated by minor mergers.
A very interesting result of this work is that morphology and sSFR do not correlate strongly. The authors conclude based on this that two separate process must be responsible for the morphological transformation and the shutting down of the SFR.
The latter conclusion is still somewhat debated in the community.
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