Evolution of stellar bars in spinning dark matter haloes and stellar bulges

  • Xingchen Li
  • , Isaac Shlosman
  • , Daniel Pfenniger
  • , Clayton Heller

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

5 Scopus citations

Abstract

We use numerical simulations to follow evolution of barred galaxies in a suite of models with progressively more massive stellar bulges, with bulge-to-total (disc+bulge) mass ratios of B/T ∼ 0–0.25, embedded in dark matter (DM) haloes with spin λ ∼ 0–0.09. We focus on models with a sequence of initial rotational support for bulges, and analyse their spinup and spindown. We find that (1) the presence of a bulge affects evolution of bars, i.e. the time-scale of bar instability, bar pattern speed, and its decay, and the vertical buckling instability. Bar strength is nearly independent of B/T in haloes with spin λ = 0, and is suppressed by a factor ∼2 for haloes with λ = 0.09; (2) The main effect of the bulge is the destruction of the harmonic core which affects the buckling; (3) The bulge plays a minor role in the exchange of angular momentum between the barred disc and the DM halo, during its spinup and spindown; (4) Buckling process triggers different response above/below the disc mid-plane, which anticorrelates with the bulge mass; (5) In spinning haloes, the buckling process has a prolonged amplitude tail, extending by few Gyr, as verified by measuring distortions in the Laplace plane; (6) Furthermore, as verified by orbital spectral analysis, the bulge gains its spin from the bar mainly via the inner Lindblad resonance, while losing it via a number of resonances lying between the outer and inner Lindblad resonance. The corollary is that we do not expect to find non-rotating bulges in barred galaxies.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)11026-11042
Number of pages17
JournalMonthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Volume527
Issue number4
DOIs
StatePublished - Feb 1 2024

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2023.

Funding

We thank Phil Hopkins for providing us with the latest version of GIZMO and Angela Collier for sharing some of the analysis software. IS is grateful for a generous support from the International Joint Research Promotion Program at Osaka University, and for hospitality of Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics (KITP) during his prolonged visit there. This work has also been supported in part by the JSPS KAKENHI grant 16H02163 (to I.S.) and by the NSF under Grant PHY-1748958 to KITP. Simulations have been performed using the University of Kentucky Lipscomb Computing Cluster. We are grateful to Vikram Gazula at the Center for Computational Studies at the University of Kentucky for help with the technical issues during the LCC runs.

FundersFunder number
Phil Hopkins
Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara
U.S. Department of Energy Chinese Academy of Sciences Guangzhou Municipal Science and Technology Project Oak Ridge National Laboratory Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment National Science Foundation National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center National Natural Science Foundation of ChinaPHY-1748958
Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Fund for the Promotion of Joint International Research16H02163

    Keywords

    • dynamics
    • galaxies: bar
    • galaxies: bulges
    • galaxies: evolution
    • galaxies: formation
    • galaxies: kinematics
    • methods: numerical

    ASJC Scopus subject areas

    • Astronomy and Astrophysics
    • Space and Planetary Science

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