Morphology with Light Profile Fitting of Confirmed Cluster Galaxies at
  z=0.84
  We perform a morphological study of 124 spectroscopically confirmed cluster
galaxies in the z=0.84 galaxy cluster RX J0152.7-1357. Our classification
scheme includes color information, visual morphology, and 1-component and
2-component light profile fitting derived from Hubble Space Telescope riz
imaging. We adopt a modified version of a detailed classification scheme
previously used in studies of field galaxies and found to be correlated with
kinematic features of those galaxies. We compare our cluster galaxy
morphologies to those of field galaxies at similar redshift. We also compare
galaxy morphologies in regions of the cluster with different dark-matter
density as determined by weak-lensing maps. We find an early-type fraction for
the cluster population as a whole of 47%, about 2.8 times higher than the
field, and similar to the dynamically young cluster MS 1054 at similar
redshift. We find the most drastic change in morphology distribution between
the low and intermediate dark matter density regions within the cluster, with
the early type fraction doubling and the peculiar fraction dropping by nearly
half. The peculiar fraction drops more drastically than the spiral fraction
going from the outskirts to the intermediate-density regions. This suggests
that many galaxies falling into clusters at z~0.8 may evolve directly from
peculiar, merging, and compact systems into early-type galaxies, without having
the chance to first evolve into a regular spiral galaxy.
