Pixel-z: Studying Substructure and Stellar Populations in Galaxies out
  to z~3 using Pixel Colors I. Systematics
  We perform a pixel-by-pixel analysis of 467 galaxies in the GOODS-VIMOS
survey to study systematic effects in extracting properties of stellar
populations (age, dust, metallicity and SFR) from pixel colors using the
pixel-z method. The systematics studied include the effect of the input stellar
population synthesis model, passband limitations and differences between
individual SED fits to pixels and global SED-fitting to a galaxy's colors. We
find that with optical-only colors, the systematic errors due to differences
among the models are well constrained. The largest impact on the age and SFR
e-folding time estimates in the pixels arises from differences between the
Maraston models and the Bruzual&Charlot models, when optical colors are used.
This results in systematic differences larger than the 2{\sigma} uncertainties
in over 10 percent of all pixels in the galaxy sample. The effect of
restricting the available passbands is more severe. In 26 percent of pixels in
the full sample, passband limitations result in systematic biases in the age
estimates which are larger than the 2{\sigma} uncertainties. Systematic effects
from model differences are reexamined using Near-IR colors for a subsample of
46 galaxies in the GOODS-NICMOS survey. For z > 1, the observed optical/NIR
colors span the rest frame UV-optical SED, and the use of different models does
not significantly bias the estimates of the stellar population parameters
compared to using optical-only colors. We then illustrate how pixel-z can be
applied robustly to make detailed studies of substructure in high redshift
galaxies such as (a) radial gradients of age, SFR, sSFR and dust and (b) the
distribution of these properties within subcomponents such as spiral arms and
clumps. Finally, we show preliminary results from the CANDELS survey
illustrating how the new HST/WFC3 data can be exploited to probe substructure
in z~1-3 galaxies.
