Bibcode
Corsini, E. M.; Méndez-Abreu, J.; Sánchez-Janssen, R.; Aguerri, J. A. L.; Zarattini, S.
Bibliographical reference
Memorie della Societa Astronomica Italiana Supplement, v.25, p.74 (2013)
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2013
Citations
2
Refereed citations
1
Description
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 are statistically significant, with Virgo being an
intermediate case. 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 of the
galaxy samples studied so far.