Investigating the link between bulge growth and quenching in massive galaxies through polychromatic bulge-disk decompositions in the CANDELS fields

Passive galaxies have different morphologies and structural properties than star-forming galaxies of similar mass. The evidence of a bimodal distribution of galaxy properties suggests a link between the quenching process and and galaxy structure. Understanding the origin of this correlation requires establishing constraints on the mechanisms as well as on the timing of bulge formation. How are bulges formed?Do bulges grow in the main sequence? Are galaxies re-accreting a star forming disk? Do galaxies start to quench from the inside? etc.Proper answers to these questions require resolving the internal components of galaxies at different epochs.Thanks to the CANDELS high-resolution multi-wavelength data, I performed 2-D bulge-disk decompositions of the surface brightness profile of $simeq 17'300$ galaxies (F160W 0$.The catalog is then used to investigate how galaxies quench and transform their morphologies.The size of disks and massive bulge is independent of the bulge-to-total ratio ($M_{*}>10^{10} M_{odot}$). It suggests a unique formation process for massive bulges and also that disk survival/regrowth is a common phenomenon after bulge formation. However pure bulges (B/T>0.8), are ~30% larger than bulges embedded in disks at fixed stellar mass and have larger Sersic indices. This is compatible with a later growth of these systems through minor mergers.Bulges in star-forming galaxies are found to be 30% larger than bulges in quenched systems, at fixed stellar mass. Regarding the disks the systematic difference is only a factor of $sim 0.1$. This can be interpreted as a signature that galaxies experience an additional morphological transformation during or after quenching. However, this result is not free of progenitor bias.Moreover, the vast majority (if not all) of pure disks (B/T 0.8) do exist however, suggesting that the formation of bulges happens while galaxies are still star forming.Finally, in order to put constraints on the formation times of bulges and disks I analyzed the UVJ colors rest frame. Almost all galaxies in our sample present negative color gradients. Bulges are always redder than the disks at all redshifts. This is compatible with a scenario of inside-out quenching put forward by previous works. However rejuvenation through disk accretion could lead to similar signatures.