Bibcode
DOI
Martinez-Valpuesta, Inma; Shlosman, Isaac
Bibliographical reference
The Astrophysical Journal, Volume 613, Issue 1, pp. L29-L32.
Advertised on:
9
2004
Journal
Citations
102
Refereed citations
87
Description
Young stellar bars in disk galaxies experience a vertical buckling
instability that terminates their growth and thickens them, resulting in
a characteristic peanut/boxy shape when viewed edge-on. Using N-body
simulations of galactic disks embedded in live halos, we have analyzed
the bar structure throughout this instability and found that the outer
(approximately) third of the bar dissolves completely while the inner
part (within the vertical inner Lindblad resonance) becomes less oval.
The bar acquires the frequently observed peanut/boxy-shaped isophotes.
We also find that the bar buckling is responsible for a mass injection
above the plane, which is subsequently trapped by specific
three-dimensional families of periodic orbits of particular shapes
explaining the observed isophotes, in line with previous work. Using a
three-dimensional orbit analysis and surfaces of sections, we infer that
the outer part of the bar is dissolved by a rapidly widening stochastic
region around its corotation radius-a process related to the bar growth.
This leads to a dramatic decrease in the bar size, decrease in the
overall bar strength, and a mild increase in its pattern speed but is
not expected to lead to a complete bar dissolution. The buckling
instability appears primarily responsible for shortening the secular
diffusion timescale to a dynamical one when building the boxy isophotes.
The sufficiently long timescale of the described evolution, ~1 Gyr, can
affect the observed bar fraction in the local universe and at higher
redshifts, both through reduced bar strength and the absence of dust
offset lanes in the bar.