English

Which bulges are favoured by barred S0 galaxies?

Astrophysics of Galaxies 2016-09-07 v1

Abstract

S0 galaxies are known to host classical bulges with a broad range of size and mass, while some such S0s are barred and some not. The origin of the bars has remained as a long-standing problem -- what made bar formation possible in certain S0s? By analysing a large sample of S0s with classical bulges observed by the Spitzer space telescope, we find that most of our barred S0s host comparatively low-mass classical bulges, typically with bulge-to-total ratio (B/TB/T) less than 0.50.5; whereas S0s with more massive classical bulges than these do not host any bar. Furthermore, we find that amongst the barred S0s, there is a trend for the longer and massive bars to be associated with comparatively bigger and massive classical bulges -- possibly suggesting bar growth being facilitated by these classical bulges. In addition, we find that the bulge effective radius is always less than the bar effective radius --indicating an interesting synergy between the host classical bulge and bars being maintained while bar growth occurred in these S0s.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1607.08603,
  title  = {Which bulges are favoured by barred S0 galaxies?},
  author = {Sudhanshu Barway and Kanak Saha and Kaustubh Vaghmare and Ajit K. Kembhavi},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1607.08603},
  year   = {2016}
}

Comments

Accepted for publication in MNRAS Letters: 5 pages, 4 figures