Star Formation Properties in Barred Galaxies. III. Statistical Study of Bar-Driven Secular Evolution Using a Sample of Nearby Barred Spirals
- Creators
- Zhou, Zhi-Min
- Cao, Chen
- Wu, Hong
Abstract
Stellar bars are important internal drivers of secular evolution in disk galaxies. Using a sample of nearby spiral galaxies with weak and strong bars, we explore the relationships between the star formation feature and stellar bars in galaxies. We find that galaxies with weak bars tend coincide with low concentrical star formation activity, while those with strong bars show a large scatter in the distribution of star formation activity. We find enhanced star formation activity in bulges toward stronger bars, although not predominantly, consistent with previous studies. Our results suggest that different stages of the secular process and many other factors may contribute to the complexity of the secular evolution. In addition, barred galaxies with intense star formation in bars tend to have active star formation in their bulges and disks, and bulges have higher star formation densities than bars and disks, indicating the evolutionary effects of bars. We then derived a possible criterion to quantify the different stages of the bar-driven physical process, while future work is needed because of the uncertainties.
Additional Information
© 2015 American Astronomical Society. Received 2014 March 18; accepted 2014 September 9; published 2014 November 25. We are grateful to the anonymous referee for thoughtful comments and insightful suggestions that helped to improve this paper. We thank Yi-Nan Zhu for his generous help and assistance throughout the data observation and M. I. Lam for advice and helpful discussions. This project is supported by Chinese National Natural Science Foundation grants No.11303038, 11433005, 11173030, 11225316, 10978014; and also by the Strategic Priority Research Program "The Emergence of Cosmological Structures" of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Grant No. XDB09000000. We thank the kind staff at the Xinglong 2.16 m telescope for their support during the observations. This work was partially supported by the Open Project Program of the Key Laboratory of Optical Astronomy, National Astronomical Observatories, Chinese Academy of Sciences. This work is based on observations made with the Spitzer Space Telescope, which is operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under NASA contract 1407. We made extensive use of the NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database (NED) which is operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.Attached Files
Published - 1538-3881_149_1_1.pdf
Submitted - 1409.3045v1.pdf
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Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 54423
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20150205-111336897
- 11303038
- Chinese National Natural Science Foundation
- 11433005
- Chinese National Natural Science Foundation
- 11173030
- Chinese National Natural Science Foundation
- 11225316
- Chinese National Natural Science Foundation
- 10978014
- Chinese National Natural Science Foundation
- XDB09000000
- Chinese Academy of Sciences Strategic Priority Research Program "The Emergence of Cosmological Structures"
- Key Laboratory of Optical Astronomy Open Project Program
- National Astronomical Observatories
- Chinese Academy of Sciences
- 1407
- NASA
- Created
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2015-02-05Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2021-11-10Created from EPrint's last_modified field