The Morphologies of Massive Galaxies at 1<z<3 in the CANDELS-UDS Field: Compact Bulges, and the Rise and Fall of Massive Disks

We have used high-resolution, HST WFC3/IR, near-infrared imaging to conduct a detailed bulge-disk decomposition of the morphologies of ~= 200 of the most massive (M _* > 10¹¹ M_⊙) galaxies at 1 < z < 3 in the CANDELS-UDS field. We find that, while such massive galaxies at low redshift are generally bulge-dominated, at redshifts 1<z<2 they are predominantly mixed bulge+disk systems, and by z > 2 they are mostly disk-dominated. Interestingly, we find that while most of the quiescent galaxies are bulge-dominated, a significant fraction (25-40%) of the most quiescent galaxies, have disk-dominated morphologies. Thus, our results suggest that the physical mechanisms which quench star-formation activity are not simply connected to those responsible for the morphological transformation of massive galaxies.