Evolution of the Size-Mass Relation of Star-forming Galaxies Since z=5.5 Revealed by CEERS

We combine deep imaging data from the CEERS early release JWST survey and Hubble Space Telescope imaging from CANDELS to examine the size-mass relation of star-forming galaxies and the morphology-quenching relation at stellar masses M-star >= 10(9.5)M(circle dot) over the redshift range 0.5 < z < 5.5. In this study with a sample of 2450 galaxies, we separate star-forming and quiescent galaxies based on their star formation activity and confirm that star-forming and quiescent galaxies have different morphologies out to z = 5.5, extending the results of earlier studies out to higher redshifts. We find that star-forming and quiescent galaxies have typical S & eacute;rsic indices of n similar to 1.3 and n similar to 4.3, respectively. Focusing on star-forming galaxies, we find that the slope of the size-mass relation is nearly constant with redshift, as was found previously, but shows a modest increase at z similar to 4.2. The intercept in the size-mass relation declines out to z = 5.5 at rates that are similar to what earlier studies found. The intrinsic scatter in the size-mass relation is relatively constant out to z = 5.5.