Nuclear starburst activity induced by elongated bulges in spiral galaxies

Abstract

We study the effects of bulge elongation on the star formation activity in the centers of spiral galaxies using the data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 7. We construct a volume-limited sample of face-on spiral galaxies with $M_r<-$19.5 mag at 0.02 $\le z<$ 0.055 by excluding barred galaxies, where the aperture of the SDSS spectroscopic fibre covers the bulges of the galaxies. We adopt the ellipticity of bulges measured by Simard et al. (2011) who performed two-dimensional bulge+disc decompositions using the SDSS images of galaxies, and identify nuclear starbursts using the fibre specific star formation rates derived from the SDSS spectra. We find a statistically significant correlation between bulge elongation and nuclear starbursts in the sense that the fraction of nuclear starbursts increases with bulge elongation. This correlation is more prominent for fainter and redder galaxies, which exhibit higher ratios of elongated bulges. We find no significant environmental dependence of the correlation between bulge elongation and nuclear starbursts. These results suggest that non-axisymmetric bulges can efficiently feed the gas into the centre of galaxies to trigger nuclear starburst activity.

arXiv comment9 pages, 7 figures, accepted for publication in MNRAS

References in corpus (60)

• Maps of Dust IR Emission for Use in Estimation of Reddening and CMBR Foregrounds
• The Sloan Digital Sky Survey: Technical Summary
• Star Formation in Galaxies Along the Hubble Sequence
• The Seventh Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
• The physical properties of star forming galaxies in the low redshift universe
• Star Formation in the Milky Way and Nearby Galaxies
• Detailed Structural Decomposition of Galaxy Images
• Stellar Masses and Star Formation Histories for 10^5 Galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
• The 3D power spectrum of galaxies from the SDSS
• Secular Evolution and the Formation of Pseudobulges in Disk Galaxies
• Color Separation of Galaxy Types in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Imaging Data
• Quantifying the bimodal color-magnitude distribution of galaxies
• The Galaxy Luminosity Function and Luminosity Density at Redshift z=0.1
• A Catalog of Bulge+Disk Decompositions and Updated Photometry for 1.12 Million Galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
• Structural Properties of Pseudo-Bulges, Classical Bulges and Elliptical Galaxies: an SDSS Perspective
• The Frequency of Barred Spiral Galaxies in the Near-IR
• Physical properties and environments of nearby galaxies
• A Catalog of Detailed Visual Morphological Classifications for 14034 Galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
• The DEEP Groth Strip Survey II. Hubble Space Telescope Structural Parameters of Galaxies in the Groth Strip
• The Recent and Continuing Assembly of Field Ellipticals by Red Mergers
• A subarcsecond resolution near-infrared study of Seyfert and `normal' galaxies: II. Morphology
• Statistical Properties of Bright Galaxies in the SDSS Photometric System
• Environmental Dependence of Properties of Galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
• The Influence of Bars on Nuclear Activity
• Internal and Collective Properties of Galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
• Metallicity and Nuclear Star Formation in Nearby Galaxy Pairs: Evidence for Tidally Induced Gas Flows
• The Central Region in M100: Observations and Modeling
• An investigation into the prominence of spiral galaxy bulges
• AINUR: Atlas of Images of NUclear Rings
• Revisiting the Hubble sequence in the SDSS DR7 spectroscopic sample: a publicly available bayesian automated classification
• The Fueling of Nuclear Activity: II. The Bar Properties of Seyfert and Normal Galaxies
• Bulges Of Nearby Galaxies With Spitzer: Scaling Relations in Pseudobulges and Classical Bulges
• The impact of gas inflows on star formation rates and metallicities in barred galaxies
• Morphology Segregation of Galaxies in the Color-Color Gradient Space
• Central Regions of Barred Galaxies: Two-Dimensional Non-self-gravitating Hydrodynamic Simulations
• Structure and star formation in disk galaxies III. Nuclear and circumnuclear H alpha emission
• Combined Effects of Galaxy Interactions and Large-Scale Environment on Galaxy Properties
• A Connection between Star Formation in Nuclear Rings and their Host Galaxies
• Quantifying the role of bars in the build-up of central mass concentrations in disk galaxies
• Bars, ovals and lenses in early-type disk galaxies: probes of galaxy evolution
• Dependence of Barred Galaxy Fraction on Galaxy Properties and Environment
• Circumnuclear regions in barred spiral galaxies II. Relations to host galaxies
• Fueling the AGN
• Transformation of Morphology and Luminosity Classes of the SDSS Galaxies
• Environmental Dependence of Local Luminous Infrared Galaxies
• Stellar and Gaseous Nuclear Disks Observed in Nearby (U)LIRGs
• Massive star formation in the central regions of spiral galaxies
• GOODS-Herschel: the impact of galaxy-galaxy interactions on the far-infrared properties of galaxies
• Activity in galactic nuclei of cluster and field galaxies in the local universe
• Star Formation in Nuclear Rings of Barred Galaxies
• The Mass Profile and Shape of Bars in the Spitzer Survey of Stellar Structure in Galaxies (S4G): Search for an Age Indicator for Bars
• Nuclear Star-Forming Ring of the Milky Way: Simulations
• The Effect of Environment on Discs and Bulges
• Star formation activity of barred spiral galaxies
• The Demographics of galactic bulges in the SDSS database
• Nuclear Rings in Galaxies---A Kinematic Perspective
• The Build-Up of Nuclear Stellar Cusps in Extreme Starburst Galaxies and Major Mergers
• Hydrodynamic simulations of the central molecular zone with realistic Galactic potential
• A Study of Environmental Effects on Galaxy Spin Using MaNGA Data
• A photometric comprehensive study of circumnuclear star forming rings: the sample

Cited by in corpus (7)

• The prevalence of pseudo-bulges in the Auriga simulations
• Bar Fraction in Early- and Late-type Spirals
• Star Formation in Nuclear Rings with the TIGRESS Framework
• The galaxy population within the virial radius of the Perseus cluster
• Demographics of Tidal Disruption Events with L-Galaxies: I. Volumetric TDE rates and the abundance of Nuclear Star Clusters
• Unraveling Joint Evolution of Bars, Star Formation, and Active Galactic Nuclei of Disk Galaxies
• Star Formation Rate in late-type galaxies: I- The H(alpha) and FUV integrated values