Nested and Single Bars in Seyfert and Non-Seyfert Galaxies

By Seppo Laine, I. Shlosman, Johan H. Knapen, Reynier Peletier. 2001

242 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We analyze the observed properties of nested and single stellar bar systems in disk galaxies. The 112 galaxies in our sample comprise the largest matched Seyfert versus non-Seyfert galaxy sample of nearby galaxies with complete near-infrared or optical imaging sensitive to length scales ranging from tens of parsecs to tens of kiloparsecs. The presence of bars is deduced by fitting ellipses to isophotes in Hubble Space Telescope (HST) H-band images up to 10'' radius and in ground-based near-infrared and optical images outside the H-band images. This is a conservative approach that is likely to result in an underestimate of the true bar fraction. We find that a significant fraction of the sample galaxies, 17% ± 4%, have more than one bar, and that 28% ± 5% of barred galaxies have nested bars. The bar fractions appear to be stable according to reasonable changes in our adopted bar criteria. For the nested bars, we detect a clear division in length between the large-scale (primary) bars and small-scale (secondary) bars, in both absolute and normalized (to the size of the galaxy) length. We argue that this bimodal distribution can be understood within the framework of disk resonances, specifically the inner Lindblad resonances (ILRs), which are located where the gravitational potential of the innermost galaxy switches effectively from three-dimensional to two-dimensional. This conclusion is further strengthened by the observed distribution of the sizes of nuclear rings which are dynamically associated with the ILRs. While primary bar sizes are found to correlate with the host galaxy sizes, no such correlation is observed for the secondary bars. Moreover, we find that secondary bars differ morphologically from single bars. Our matched Seyfert and non-Seyfert samples show a statistically significant excess of bars among the Seyfert galaxies at practically all length scales. We confirm our previous results that bars are more abundant in Seyfert hosts than in non-Seyfert galaxies and that Seyfert galaxies always show a preponderance of "thick" bars compared to the bars in non-Seyfert galaxies. Finally, no correlation is observed between the presence of a bar and that of companion galaxies, even relatively bright ones. Overall, since star formation and dust extinction can be significant even in the H band, the stellar dynamics of the central kiloparsec cannot always be revealed reliably by the use of near-infrared surface photometry alone.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Spectroscopy

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/aaf88edd68e839094193a359ee6746491bdfd32e

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. P. Hopkins
2. L. Hernquist
3. J. Kormendy
4. D. M. Alexander
5. E. Quataert
6. Thomas J. Cox
7. S. Jogee
8. Luis C. Ho

In Spectroscopy

1. P. Erwin
2. S. Jogee
3. I. Marinova
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6. P. Hopkins
7. E. Quataert
8. F. Combes

Citations in the corpus

• The population of barred galaxies in the local universe - I. Detection and characterisation of bars (2009, methodology): “…by eye estimates on galaxy images (Kormendy 1979; Martin 1995), locating the maximum ellipticity of the galaxy isophotes (Wozniak et al. 1995; Laine et al. 2002; Marinova & Jogee 2007), looking for variations of the isophotal position angle (Sheth et al. 2003; Erwin 2005) or of the phase…”
• A CLASSICAL MORPHOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF GALAXIES IN THE SPITZER SURVEY OF STELLAR STRUCTURE IN GALAXIES (S4G) (2015, background): “Secondary bars, also commonly known as nuclear bars, are well-known features of early-type barred galaxies (e.g., Laine et al. 2002; Erwin 2004).”
• How do massive black holes get their gas (2009, background): “…the fraction of non-AGN in which they appear), there are ubiquitous asymmetric gas structures of some sort, similar to those modelled here (see e.g. Laine et al. 2002; Martini & Pogge 1999; Peletier et al. 1999; Sakamoto et al. 1999; Garcı́a-Burillo et al. 2005; Krips et al. 2007; Haan et al.…”
• An analytic model of angular momentum transport by gravitational torques: from galaxies to massive black holes (2010, background): “These observations also extend to galactic nuclei where secondary instabilities ("bars within bars") may become important (Laine et al. 2002; Schinnerer et al. 2006; Knapen et al. 2002), and to the gas surrounding bright AGN (Combes et al. 2004; García-Burillo et al. 2005).”
• Double Bars, Inner Disks, and Nuclear Rings in Early-Type Disk Galaxies (2002, background): “More recently, Laine et al. (2002) used a combination of archival HST NICMOS H-band images and Digitized Sky Survey images to examine matched sets of Seyfert and “control” galaxies, similar in many respects to those of Mulchaey, Regan, & Kundu (1997).”
• How Large Are the Bars in Barred Galaxies (2005, methodology): “It is also consistent with the correlation reported by Laine et al. (2002), who used aǫ for bar sizes – especially since the latter authors’ samples included some Sc galaxies, for which the correlation is stronger (see below).”
• Molecular gas in NUclei of GAlaxies (NUGA) - IV. Gravitational torques and AGN feeding (2005, unknown): “Nuclear stellar bars seem to be as common in AGN as in non-AGN (Regan & Mulchaey 1999; Laine et al. 2002).”
• Characterizing Bars at z ~ 0 in the Optical and NIR: Implications for the Evolution of Barred Disks with Redshift (2006, methodology): “We also note that the drop in ellipticity by 0.1 at the transition from bar to disk has been shown to work well in identifying bars (e.g., Knapen et al. 2000; Laine et al. 2002; Jogee et al. 2002a, 2002b, 2004).”
• Bars in Disk-dominated and Bulge-dominated Galaxies at z ~ 0: New Insights from ~3600 SDSS Galaxies (2007, methodology): “…a tool to characterize the length and shape of bars (Friedli et al. 1996; Jogee et al. 1999, 2002a, 2002b; Knapen et al. 2000; Sheth et al. 2000, 2003, 2007; Laine et al. 2002; Whyte et al. 2002; Elmegreen et al. 2004a; Reese et al. 2007; Marinova & Jogee 2007; Menéndez-Delmestre et al. 2007).”
• Double-Barred Galaxies I. A Catalog of Barred Galaxies with Stellar Secondary Bars and Inner Disks (2003, methodology): “NGC 2339: Suggested as double-barred by Laine et al. (2002).”
• AINUR: Atlas of Images of NUclear Rings (2009, methodology): “These rings are usually located between the two ILRs where they exist and, if not, they are found just inside a single ILR (Knapen et al. 1995; Shlosman 1999).”
• Gas flow models in the Milky Way embedded bars (2008, background): “As much as one third of barred galaxies have a secondary nuclear bar (Laine et al. 2002).”
• Circumnuclear Dust in Nearby Active and Inactive Galaxies. II. Bars, Nuclear Spirals, and the Fueling of Active Galactic Nuclei (2002, background): “…bars in only ∼ 25% of all Seyferts (Regan & Mulchaey 1999; Martini et al. 2001) and studies of Seyfert and control samples have found similar fractions of double bars in samples of active and inactive galaxies with large-scale bars (Márquez et al. 2000; Laine et al. 2002; Erwin & Sparke 2002).”
• Secular Evolution via Bar-driven Gas Inflow: Results from BIMA SONG (2005, background): “…also suggest that further inflow of gas by a “bars-within-bars” scenario may fuel active galactic nuclei (Shlosman, Frank, & Begelman 1989), although the evidence for such fueling is weak (Regan & Mulchaey 1999; Knapen, Shlosman, & Peletier 2000; Laine et al. 2002; Laurikainen, Salo & Buta 2004).”
• What drives the growth of black holes (2011, background): “…between the circumnuclear morphologies of AGNs and late-type galaxies not hosting AGN activity, with nuclear bars, spirals, discs, and circumnuclear dust equally likely to be found in all late-type systems (e.g., Laine et al., 2002; Pogge & Martini, 2002; Martini et al., 2003; Hunt & Malkan, 2004).”
• Secular Evolution and the Formation of Pseudobulges in Disk Galaxies (2004, methodology): “Laine et al. (2002) analyze HST NICMOS H-band images of a matched sample of Seyfert and non-Seyfert galaxies.”
• Photometric scaling relations of lenticular and spiral galaxies (2010, background): “Moreover the disks in most S0 galaxies are not featureless: bars are known to be prominent in S0s, nuclear bars are frequent (Erwin & Sparke 2002; Laine et al. 2002; Laurikainen et al. 2009), and even a large majority of non-barred S0s have ovals or lenses (Laurikainen et al. 2009).”