| This thesis presents a sample of resolved, infrared (IR) images of galaxies at z ∼ 0.6 taken with the 10 m Keck Telescope's adaptive optics (AO) system. We regularly achieve a spatial resolution of and are thus able to resolve both the disk and bulge components. We have extracted morphological information for ten galaxies and compared their properties to those of a local sample. The selection effects of both samples were explicitly taken into account in order to derive the unbiased result that disks at z ∼ 0.6 are ∼0.6 mag arcsec−2 brighter than, and about the same size as, local disks. The case with no luminosity evolution is ruled out at 90% confidence. We also find, in a more qualitative analysis, that the bulges of these galaxies have undergone a smaller amount of surface brightness evolution and also have not changed significantly in size from z ∼ 0.6 to today. This is the first time this type of morphological evolution has been measured in the IR and it points to the unique power of AO in exploring galaxy evolution. |
