Rings and bars: unmasking secular evolution of galaxies

Abstract

Secular evolution gradually shapes galaxies by internal processes, in contrast to early cosmological evolution which is more rapid. An important driver of secular evolution is the flow of gas from the disk into the central regions, often under the influence of a bar. In this paper, we review several new observational results on bars and nuclear rings in galaxies. They show that these components are intimately linked to each other, and to the properties of their host galaxy. We briefly discuss how upcoming observations, e.g., imaging from the Spitzer Survey of Stellar Structure in Galaxies (S4G), will lead to significant further advances in this area of research.

Invited review at "Galaxies and their Masks", celebrating Ken Freeman's 70-th birthday, Sossusvlei, Namibia, April 2010. To be published by Springer, New York, editors D.L. Block, K.C. Freeman, & I. Puerari; minor changes

References in corpus (25)

• The effect of galaxy mass ratio on merger--driven starbursts
• Star formation efficiency in galaxy interactions and mergers: a statistical study
• A Near-Infrared Study of 2MASS Bars in Local Galaxies: An Anchor for High Redshift Studies
• The population of barred galaxies in the local universe I. Detection and characterisation of bars
• On the frequency, intensity and duration of starburst episodes triggered by galaxy interactions and mergers
• Bars in Disk-Dominated and Bulge-Dominated Galaxies at z~0: New Insights from ~3600 SDSS Galaxies
• Properties of Bars and Bulges in the Hubble Sequence
• Minor Galaxy Interactions: Star Formation Rates and Galaxy Properties
• Interaction-induced star formation in a complete sample of 10^5 nearby star-forming galaxies
• On the Fraction of Barred Spiral Galaxies
• The Spitzer Spirals, Bridges, and Tails Interacting Galaxy Survey: Interaction-Induced Star Formation in the Mid-Infrared
• The Near-infrared S0 Survey III: Morphology of 15 Southern Early-type Disk Galaxies
• Mid-Infrared Galaxy Morphology from the Spitzer Survey of Stellar Structure in Galaxies (S^4G): The Imprint of the de Vaucouleurs Revised Hubble-Sandage Classification System at 3.6 microns
• Bars, ovals and lenses in early-type disk galaxies: probes of galaxy evolution
• The H alpha Galaxy Survey. VIII. Close companions and interactions, and the definition of starbursts
• Bars do drive spiral density waves
• The Star Formation History and Evolution of the Circumnuclear Region of M100
• Fourier Dissection of Early-Type Galaxy Bars
• Star formation and stellar populations across nuclear rings in galaxies
• Do Bars Drive Spiral Density Waves?
• The Potential-Density Phase Shift Method for Determining the Corotation Radii in Spiral and Barred Galaxies
• Variation of Galactic Bar Length with Amplitude and Density as Evidence for Bar Growth over a Hubble Time
• A Morphological and Statistical Analysis of Ansae in Barred Galaxies
• Decreased Frequency of Strong Bars in S0 Galaxies: Evidence for Secular Evolution?
• On the curvature of dustlanes in galactic bars

Cited by in corpus (4)

• A Classical Morphological Analysis of Galaxies in the Spitzer Survey of Stellar Structure in Galaxies (S4G)
• Galaxy and Mass Assembly (GAMA): Variation in Galaxy Structure Across the Green Valley
• The effects of AGN feedback on the structural and dynamical properties of Milky Way-mass galaxies in cosmological simulations
• The EFIGI catalogue of 4458 nearby galaxies with morphology II. Statistical properties along the Hubble sequence