paper

On the orbits that generate the X-shape in the Milky Way bulge

arXiv:1703.07366 · doi:10.1093/mnras/stx1262

Abstract

The Milky Way bulge shows a box/peanut or X-shaped bulge (hereafter BP/X) when viewed in infrared or microwave bands. We examine orbits in an N-body model of a barred disk galaxy that is scaled to match the kinematics of the Milky Way (MW) bulge. We generate maps of projected stellar surface density, unsharp masked images, 3D excess-mass distributions (showing mass outside ellipsoids), line-of-sight number count distributions, and 2D line-of-sight kinematics for the simulation as well as co-added orbit families, in order to identify the orbits primarily responsible for the BP/X shape. We estimate that between 19-23\% of the mass of the bar is associated with the BP/X shape and that most bar orbits contribute to this shape which is clearly seen in projected surface density maps and 3D excess mass for non-resonant box orbits, "banana" orbits, "fish/pretzel" orbits and "brezel" orbits. {We find that nearly all bar orbit families contribute some mass to the 3D BP/X-shape. All co-added orbit families show a bifurcation in stellar number count distribution with heliocentric distance that resembles the bifurcation observed in red clump stars in the MW. However, only the box orbit family shows an increasing separation of peaks with increasing galactic latitude , similar to that observed.} Our analysis shows that no single orbit family fully explains all the observed features associated with the MW's BP/X shaped bulge, but collectively the non-resonant boxes and various resonant boxlet orbits contribute at different distances from the center to produce this feature. We propose that since box orbits have three incommensurable orbital fundamental frequencies, their 3-dimensional shapes are highly flexible and, like Lissajous figures, this family of orbits is most easily able to adapt to evolution in the shape of the underlying potential.

16 pages, 10 figures, Accepted for Publication in MNRAS

References in corpus (10)

Cited by in corpus (28)