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Extreme emission line galaxies (EELGs) are typically characterized by high equivalent widths (EWs) which are driven by elevated specific star formation rates (sSFR) in low-mass galaxies with subsolar metallicities and little dust. Such extreme systems are rare in the local universe, but the number density of EELGs increases with redshift. Such starburst galaxies are currently presumed to be the main drivers of hydrogen reionization over 5.50.4-1 which indicates that star formation may be the dominant source of ionization. Based on the photometric fluxes, we find an increase of EW([OIII]+H$\beta$) with sSFR and $\Sigma_{SFR}$, and a decrease with age and stellar mass. The sample of EELGs can reach $\Sigma_{SFR}>$10Msun yr$^{-1}$kpc$^{-2}$ which indicate they are strong candidates of LyC leakers. Another indirect indicator is the high values of O32>5 that can be reached for some galaxies in the sample., Comment: Accepted for publication in A&A. We updated the manuscript following referee's suggestions

Visual inspections of the first optical rest-frame images from JWST have indicated a surprisingly high fraction of disk galaxies at high redshifts. Here, we alternatively apply self-supervised machine learning to explore the morphological diversity at $z \geq 3$. Our proposed data-driven representation scheme of galaxy morphologies, calibrated on mock images from the TNG50 simulation, is shown to be robust to noise and to correlate well with the physical properties of the simulated galaxies, including their 3D structure. We apply the method simultaneously to F200W and F356W galaxy images of a mass-complete sample ($M_*/M_\odot>10^9$) at $ 3 \leq z \leq 6$ from the first JWST/NIRCam CEERS data release. We find that the simulated and observed galaxies do not exactly populate the same manifold in the representation space from contrastive learning. We also find that half the galaxies classified as disks -- either CNN-based or visually -- populate a similar region of the representation space as TNG50 galaxies with low stellar specific angular momentum and non-oblate structure. Although our data-driven study does not allow us to firmly conclude on the true nature of these galaxies, it suggests that the disk fraction at $z \geq 3$ remains uncertain and possibly overestimated by traditional supervised classifications. Deeper imaging and spectroscopic follow-ups as well as comparisons with other simulations will help to unambiguously determine the true nature of these galaxies, and establish more robust constraints on the emergence of disks at very high redshift., Comment: 28 pages, 22 figures. Accepted for publication in ApJ

We present the results from a study of the morphologies of moderate luminosity X-ray selected AGN host galaxies in comparison to a carefully mass-matched control sample at 0.5 < z < 3 in the CANDELS GOODS-S field. We apply a multi-wavelength morphological decomposition analysis to these two samples and report on the differences between the morphologies as fitted from single Sersic and multiple Sersic models, and models which include an additional nuclear point-source component. Thus, we are able to compare the widely adopted single Sersic fits from previous studies to the results from a full morphological decomposition, and address the issue of how biased the inferred properties of AGN hosts are by a potential nuclear contribution from the AGN itself. We find that the AGN hosts are mixed systems which have higher bulge fractions than the control sample in our highest redshift bins at the >99.7% confidence level, according to all model fits even those which adopt a point-source component. This serves to alleviate concerns that previous, purely single Sersic, analyses of AGN hosts could have been spuriously biased towards higher bulge fractions. This dataset allows us to further probe the physical nature of these point-source components; we find no strong correlation between the point-source component and AGN activity, and that these point-source components are best modelled physically by nuclear starbursts. Our analysis of the bulge and disk fractions of these AGN hosts in comparison to a mass-matched control sample reveals a similar morphological evolutionary track for both the active and non-active populations, providing further evidence in favour of a model where AGN activity is triggered by secular processes., Comment: 14 pages, 16 figures, submitted to MNRAS