Stellar Mass Assembly History of Massive Quiescent Galaxies since $z\sim4$: Insights from Spatially Resolved SED Fitting with JWST Data

Abstract

Massive quiescent galaxies at high redshift show significantly more compact morphology than their local counterparts. To examine their internal structure across a wide redshift range and investigate potential redshift dependence, we performed spatially resolved SED fitting using pixedfit software on massive $(\log(M_*/M_\odot)\sim11)$ quiescent galaxies at $0<z<4$ with public James Webb Space Telescope and Hubble Space Telescope imaging data from the Public Release Imaging for Extragalactic Research and the Cosmic Evolution Early Release Science Survey. We find that at $z \sim 3.5$, the half-mass radius is about 5.4 times smaller than at $z \sim 0.5$. This growth is driven by stellar mass buildup in the outskirts ($r > 4$ kpc), while the central regions ($r \sim 1$ kpc) remain largely unchanged, with stellar mass surface density similar to local quiescent galaxies. The estimated star formation rates are too low to explain the stellar mass growth, indicating an additional stellar mass accumulation process, such as mergers, is necessary. We parameterize the size-mass relation of the most massive galaxies in our sample as $\log(R_{e,mass}) \propto \alpha \log(M_*)$, and find $\alpha = 2.67^{+1.14}_{-1.17}$ for $z\lessapprox2$, consistent with growth dominated by minor mergers, and $\alpha = 0.91^{+0.20}_{-0.16}$ for $z\gtrapprox2$, consistent with growth dominated by major mergers. These results indicate that massive quiescent galaxies originate from compact quenched systems and grow through combinations of minor and major mergers.