Bibcode
Méndez-Abreu, J.; Sánchez-Janssen, R.; Aguerri, J. A. L.; Corsini, E. M.; Zarattini, S.
Bibliographical reference
The Astrophysical Journal Letters, Volume 761, Issue 1, article id. L6, 5 pp. (2012).
Advertised on:
12
2012
Citations
63
Refereed citations
61
Description
The effects that interactions produce on galaxy disks and how they
modify the subsequent formation of bars need to be distinguished to
fully understand the relationship between bars and environment. To this
aim we derive the bar fraction in three different environments ranging
from the field to Virgo and Coma Clusters, covering an unprecedentedly
large range of galaxy luminosities (or, equivalently, stellar masses).
We confirm that the fraction of barred galaxies strongly depends on
galaxy luminosity. We also show that the difference between the bar
fraction distributions as a function of galaxy luminosity (and mass) in
the field and Coma Cluster is statistically significant, with Virgo
being an intermediate case. The fraction of barred galaxies shows a
maximum of about 50% at Mr ~= – 20.5 in clusters,
whereas the peak is shifted to Mr ~= – 19 in the field.
We interpret this result as a variation of the effect of environment on
bar formation depending on galaxy luminosity. We speculate that brighter
disk galaxies are stable enough against interactions to keep their cold
structure, thus, the interactions are able to trigger bar formation. For
fainter galaxies, the interactions become strong enough to heat up the
disks inhibiting bar formation and even destroying the disks. Finally,
we point out that the controversy regarding whether the bar fraction
depends on environment could be resolved by taking into account the
different luminosity ranges probed by the galaxy samples studied so far.
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