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Register a new userBars rejuvenating bulges? Evidence from stellar population analysis
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Added by
Dimitri Alexei Gadotti
Publication date
2011
fields
Physics
and research's language is
English
Authors
Paula Coelho
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We obtained stellar ages and metallicities via spectrum fitting for a sample of 575 bulges with spectra available from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. The structural properties of the galaxies have been studied in detail in Gadotti (2009b) and the sample contains 251 bulges in galaxies with bars. Using the whole sample, where galaxy stellar mass distributions for barred and unbarred galaxies are similar, we find that bulges in barred and unbarred galaxies occupy similar loci in the age vs. metallicity plane. However, the distribution of bulge ages in barred galaxies shows an excess of populations younger than ~ 4 Gyr, when compared to bulges in unbarred galaxies. Kolmogorov-Smirnov statistics confirm that the age distributions are different with a significance of 99.94%. If we select sub-samples for which the bulge stellar mass distributions are similar for barred and unbarred galaxies, this excess vanishes for galaxies with bulge mass log M < 10.1 M_Sun while for more massive galaxies we find a bimodal bulge age distribution for barred galaxies only, corresponding to two normal distributions with mean ages of 10.4 and 4.7 Gyr. We also find twice as much AGN among barred galaxies, as compared to unbarred galaxies, for low-mass bulges. By combining a large sample of high quality data with sophisticated image and spectral analysis, we are able to find evidence that the presence of bars affect the mean stellar ages of bulges. This lends strong support to models in which bars trigger star formation activity in the centers of galaxies.
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This is the second paper of a series aimed to study the stellar kinematics and population properties of bulges in highly-inclined barred galaxies. In this work, we carry out a detailed analysis of the stellar age, metallicity and [Mg/Fe] of 28 highly-inclined ($i > 65^{o}$) disc galaxies, from S0 to S(B)c, observed with the SAURON integral-field spectrograph. The sample is divided into two clean samples of barred and unbarred galaxies, on the basis of the correlation between the stellar velocity and h$_3$ profiles, as well as the level of cylindrical rotation within the bulge region. We find that while the mean stellar age, metallicity and [Mg/Fe] in the bulges of barred and unbarred galaxies are not statistically distinct, the [Mg/Fe] gradients along the minor axis (away from the disc) of barred galaxies are significantly different than those without bars. For barred galaxies, stars that are vertically further away from the midplane are in general more [Mg/Fe]--enhanced and thus the vertical gradients in [Mg/Fe] for barred galaxies are mostly positive, while for unbarred bulges the [Mg/Fe] profiles are typically negative or flat. This result, together with the old populations observed in the barred sample, indicates that bars are long-lasting structures, and therefore are not easily destroyed. The marked [Mg/Fe] differences with the bulges of unbarred galaxies indicate that different formation/evolution scenarios are required to explain their build-up, and emphasizes the role of bars in redistributing stellar material in the bulge dominated regions.
Boxy/peanut bulges in disc galaxies have been associated to stellar bars. We analyse their properties in a large sample of $N$-body simulations, using different methods to measure their strength, shape and possible asymmetry, and then inter-compare the results. Some of these methods can be applied to both simulations and observations. In particular, we seek correlations between bar and peanut properties, which, when applied to real galaxies, will give information on bars in edge-on galaxies, and on peanuts in face-on galaxies.
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We present an analysis of the environmental dependence of bars and bulges in disc galaxies, using a volume-limited catalogue of 15810 galaxies at z<0.06 from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey with visual morphologies from the Galaxy Zoo 2 project. We find that the likelihood of having a bar, or bulge, in disc galaxies increases when the galaxies have redder (optical) colours and larger stellar masses, and observe a transition in the bar and bulge likelihoods, such that massive disc galaxies are more likely to host bars and bulges. We use galaxy clustering methods to demonstrate statistically significant environmental correlations of barred, and bulge-dominated, galaxies, from projected separations of 150 kpc/h to 3 Mpc/h. These environmental correlations appear to be independent of each other: i.e., bulge-dominated disc galaxies exhibit a significant bar-environment correlation, and barred disc galaxies show a bulge-environment correlation. We demonstrate that approximately half (50 +/- 10%) of the bar-environment correlation can be explained by the fact that more massive dark matter haloes host redder disc galaxies, which are then more likely to have bars. Likewise, we show that the environmental dependence of stellar mass can only explain a small fraction (25 +/- 10%) of the bar-environment correlation. Therefore, a significant fraction of our observed environmental dependence of barred galaxies is not due to colour or stellar mass dependences, and hence could be due to another galaxy property. Finally, by analyzing the projected clustering of barred and unbarred disc galaxies with halo occupation models, we argue that barred galaxies are in slightly higher-mass haloes than unbarred ones, and some of them (approximately 25%) are satellite galaxies in groups. We also discuss implications about the effects of minor mergers and interactions on bar formation.
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