The lifetime of galactic bars: central mass concentrations and gravity torques

By Frédéric Bournaud, F. Combes, B. Semelin. 2005

150 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Bars in gas-rich spiral galaxies are short-lived. They drive gas inflows through their gravity torques, and at the same time self-regulate their strength. Their robustness has been subject of debate, as it was thought that only the resulting central mass concentrations (CMCs) were weakening bars, and only relatively rare massive CMCs were able to completely destroy them. Through numerical simulations including gas dynamics, we find that with the gas parameters of normal spiral galaxies, the CMC is not sufficient to fully dissolve the bar. But another overlooked mechanism, the transfer of angular momentum from the infalling gas to the stellar bar, can also strongly weaken the bar. In addition, we show that gravity torques are correctly reproduced in simulations, and conclude that bars are transient features, with lifetime of 1–2 Gyr in typical Sb-Sc galaxies, because of the combined effects of CMCs and gravity torques, while most existing works had focussed on the CMC effects alone.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/bc352ca5877cf4d97c6a571e0722b52a8a17b833

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. P. Hopkins
2. I. Minchev
3. A. Dekel
4. L. Hernquist
5. M. Martig
6. Volker Springel
7. E. Quataert
8. R. Somerville

Citations in the corpus

• An analytic model of angular momentum transport by gravitational torques: from galaxies to massive black holes (2010, background): “The “pile up” of material in these shocks manifests itself observationally as dust lanes and enhanced star formation in the leading edge of spiral arms (Roberts et al. 1979; Athanassoula 1992b; Wada 1994; Bournaud et al. 2005).”
• Nobeyama CO Atlas of Nearby Spiral Galaxies: Distribution of Molecular Gas in Barred and Nonbarred Spiral Galaxies (2007, background): “It is still an open question as to whether bars are short lived due to destruction by mass transport toward the center or not (e.g., Bournaud & Combes 2002; Das et al. 2003; Shen & Sellwood 2004; Bournaud et al. 2005; Athanassoula et al. 2005).”
• Evolution of galactic discs: multiple patterns, radial migration, and disc outskirts (2012, background): “Earlier works have related the formation of a bar and its strength to the halo concentration (e.g., Athanassoula and Misiriotis 2002; Bournaud et al. 2005), as well as its triaxiality (Machado and Athanassoula, 2010).”
• Characterizing Bars at z ~ 0 in the Optical and NIR: Implications for the Evolution of Barred Disks with Redshift (2006, methodology): “We note that simulations of bar-driven gas inflow by Bournaud et al. (2005) yield widely different predictions from those discussed above.”
• BLACK HOLE GROWTH AND ACTIVE GALACTIC NUCLEI OBSCURATION BY INSTABILITY-DRIVEN INFLOWS IN HIGH-REDSHIFT DISK GALAXIES FED BY COLD STREAMS (2011, background): “In low-redshift disks, the instability is a secular process limited to non-axisymmetric modes with considerably weaker torquing: bars are invoked in some AGN models (Fanidakis et al. 2011; Begelman et al. 2006) but need about 10 rotation periods to convey some gas inward (Bournaud et al. 2005).”
• The population of barred galaxies in the local universe - I. Detection and characterisation of bars (2009, background): “Some numerical simulations of bar formation and evolution propose that bars can be formed and destroyed fastly due to the accretion of gas towards the central regions of the galaxies (Pfenniger & Norman 1990; Bournaud & Combes 2002; Bournaud et al. 2005).”
• The Secular Evolution of Disk Structural Parameters (2005, result): “This result is different from that of Bournaud et al. (2005); we note that our model NG5 differs from theirs in two important ways.”
• MORPHOLOGICAL QUENCHING OF STAR FORMATION: MAKING EARLY-TYPE GALAXIES RED (2009, background): “Parametric studies in Bournaud & Combes (2002, appendix A) and Bournaud et al. (2005) show that over a certain range, variations of the dissipation parameter β have limited effects on the global evolution of modeled gas disks as a stronger dissipation is compensated by a stronger gravitational…”
• Bars in Disk-dominated and Bulge-dominated Galaxies at z ~ 0: New Insights from ~3600 SDSS Galaxies (2007, background): “…does not exclude, however, the possibility that at very early epochs (e.g., z > 1:5) when disks were still assembling, the different prevailing physical conditions (e.g., large CMCs and gas inflows) might destroy bars (e.g., Bournaud et al. 2005, but see Debattista et al. 2006; Heller et al. 2007).”