Dynamical Effects of Nuclear Rings in Disk Galaxies

We investigate the dynamical response of stellar orbits in a rotating barred galaxy potential to the perturbation by a nuclear gaseous ring. The change in 3D periodic orbit families is examined as the gas accumulates between the inner Lindblad resonances. It is found that the phase space allowable to the x2 family of orbits is substantially increased and a vertical instability strip appears with the growing mass of the ring. A significant distortion of the x1 orbits is observed in the vicinity of the ring, which leads to the intersection between orbits with different values of the Jacobi integral. We also examine the dependence of the orbital response to the eccentricity and alignment of the ring with the bar. Misalignment between an oval ring and a bar can leave observational footprints in the form of twisted near-infrared isophotes in the vicinity of the ring. It is inferred that a massive nuclear ring acts to weaken and dissolve the stellar bar exterior to the ring, whereas only weakly affecting the orbits interior to the inner Lindblad resonances. Consequences for gas evolution in the circumnuclear regions of barred galaxies are discussed as well.Comment: 27 pages, 11 postscript figures included, latex using aastex 4.0, uuencoded compressed tar file, to appear in Ap

A Subarcsecond Resolution Near-infrared Study of Seyfert and Normal Galaxies II. Morphology

Peer reviewe

Phase-Transition Theory of Instabilities. II. Fourth-Harmonic Bifurcations and Lambda-Transitions

We use a free-energy minimization approach to describe the secular and dynamical instabilities as well as the bifurcations along equilibrium sequences of rotating, self-gravitating fluid systems. Our approach is fully nonlinear and stems from the Ginzburg-Landau theory of phase transitions. In this paper, we examine fourth-harmonic axisymmetric disturbances in Maclaurin spheroids and fourth-harmonic nonaxisymmetric disturbances in Jacobi ellipsoids. These two cases are very similar in the framework of phase transitions. Irrespective of whether a nonlinear first-order phase transition occurs between the critical point and the higher turning point or an apparent second-order phase transition occurs beyond the higher turning point, the result is fission (i.e. ``spontaneous breaking'' of the topology) of the original object on a secular time scale: the Maclaurin spheroid becomes a uniformly rotating axisymmetric torus and the Jacobi ellipsoid becomes a binary. The presence of viscosity is crucial since angular momentum needs to be redistributed for uniform rotation to be maintained. The phase transitions of the dynamical systems are briefly discussed in relation to previous numerical simulations of the formation and evolution of protostellar systems.Comment: 34 pages, postscript, compressed,uuencoded. 7 figures available in postscript, compressed form by anonymous ftp from asta.pa.uky.edu (cd /shlosman/paper2 mget *.ps.Z). To appear in Ap

Discovery and Implications of a new large-scale stellar bar in NGC 5248

Peer reviewe

Induced Nested Galactic Bars Inside Assembling Dark Matter Halos

We investigate the formation and evolution of nested bar systems in disk galaxies in a cosmological setting. Development of an isolated dark matter (DM) and baryon density perturbation has been followed. The disks form and grow within the assembling triaxial DM halos. The gas forms stars and the feedback from the stellar evolution is accounted for in terms of supernovae and OB stellar winds. Focusing on a representative model, we show the formation of a nested bars with characteristic sub-kpc and few kpc sizes. The system evolves through successive dynamical couplings and decouplings, forcing the gas inwards, down to the limiting scale of a numerical resolution. It settles in a state of a resonant coupling. The initial bar formation is triggered in response to the tidal torques from the triaxial DM halo which acts as a finite perturbation. An oval disk with strong and varying grand-design arms forms as well. The inflow rate can support a broad range of activity within the central kpc, from quasar- to Seyfert-types, supplemented by a vigorous star formation as a by-product

The Central Region in M100: Observations and Modeling

We present new high-resolution observations of the center of the late-type spiral M100 (NGC 4321) supplemented by 3D numerical modeling of stellar and gas dynamics, including star formation (SF). NIR imaging has revealed a stellar bar, previously inferred from optical and 21 cm observations, and an ovally-shaped ring-like structure in the plane of the disk. The K isophotes become progressively elongated and skewed to the position angle of the bar (outside and inside the `ring') forming an inner bar-like region. The galaxy exhibits a circumnuclear starburst in the inner part of the K `ring'. Two maxima of the K emission have been observed to lie symmetrically with respect to the nucleus and equidistant from it slightly leading the stellar bar. We interpret the twists in the K isophotes as being indicative of the presence of a double inner Lindblad resonance (ILR) and test this hypothesis by modeling the gas flow in a self-consistent gas + stars disk embedded in a halo, with an overall NGC4321-like mass distribution. We have reproduced the basic morphology of the region (the bar, the large scale trailing shocks, two symmetric K peaks corresponding to gas compression maxima which lie at the caustic formed by the interaction of a pair of trailing and leading shocks in the vicinity of the inner ILR, both peaks being sites of SF, and two additional zones of SF corresponding to the gas compression maxima, referred usually as `twin peaks').Comment: 31 pages, postscript, compressed, uuencoded. 21 figures available in postscript, compressed form by anonymous ftp from ftp://asta.pa.uky.edu/shlosman/main100 , mget *.ps.Z. To appear in Ap.