CLEAR: The Gas-Phase Metallicity Gradients of Star-Forming Galaxies at
  0.6 < z < 2.6
  We report on the gas-phase metallicity gradients of a sample of 264
star-forming galaxies at 0.6 < z < 2.6, measured through deep near-infrared
Hubble Space Telescope slitless spectroscopy. The observations include 12-orbit
depth Hubble/WFC3 G102 grism spectra taken as a part of the CANDELS Lya
Emission at Reionization (CLEAR) survey, and archival WFC3 G102+G141 grism
spectra overlapping the CLEAR footprint. The majority of galaxies (84%) in this
sample are consistent with a zero or slightly positive metallicity gradient
across the full mass range probed (8.5 < log M_*/M_sun < 10.5). We measure the
intrinsic population scatter of the metallicity gradients, and show that it
increases with decreasing stellar mass---consistent with previous reports in
the literature, but confirmed here with a much larger sample. To understand the
physical mechanisms governing this scatter, we search for correlations between
the observed gradient and various stellar population properties at fixed mass.
However, we find no evidence for a correlation with the galaxy properties we
consider---including star-formation rates, sizes, star-formation rate surface
densities, and star-formation rates per gravitational potential energy. We use
the observed weakness of these correlations to provide material constraints for
predicted intrinsic correlations from theoretical models.
