Bibcode
Castillo-Morales, A.; Jiménez-Vicente, J.; Mediavilla, E.; Battaner, E.
Bibliographical reference
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Volume 380, Issue 2, pp. 489-498.
Advertised on:
9
2007
Citations
12
Refereed citations
11
Description
We analyse new integral-field spectroscopy of the inner region (central
2.5 kpc) of the spiral galaxy NGC 4321 to study the peculiar kinematics
of this region. Fourier analysis of the velocity residuals obtained by
subtracting an axisymmetric rotation model from the Hα velocity
field indicates that the distortions are global features generated by an
m = 2 perturbation of the gravitational potential which can be explained
by the nuclear bar. This bar has been previously observed in the
near-infrared but not in the optical continuum dominated by star
formation. We detect the optical counterpart of this bar in the 2D
distribution of the old stellar population (inferred from the equivalent
width map of the stellar absorption lines). We apply the
Tremaine-Weinberg method to the stellar velocity field to calculate the
pattern speed of the inner bar, obtaining a value of Ωb
= 160 +/- 70kms-1kpc-1. This value is considerably
larger than the one obtained when a simple bar model is considered.
However, the uncertainties in the pattern speed determination prevent us
from giving support to alternative scenarios.