Do bulges stop stars forming?

Abstract

In this paper, we use the Herschel Reference Survey to make a direct test of the hypothesis that the growth of a stellar bulge leads to a reduction in the star-formation efficiency of a galaxy (or conversely a growth in the gas-depletion timescale) as a result of the stabilisation of the gaseous disk by the gravitational field of the bulge. We find a strong correlation between star-formation efficiency and specific star-formation rate in galaxies without prominent bulges and in galaxies of the same morphological type, showing that there must be some other process besides the growth of a bulge that reduces the star-formation efficiency in galaxies. However, we also find that galaxies with more prominent bulges (Hubble types E to Sab) do have significantly lower star-formation efficiencies than galaxies with later morphological types, which is at least consistent with the hypothesis that the growth of a bulge leads to the reduction in the star-formation efficiency. The answer to the question in the title is therefore, yes and no: bulges may reduce the star-formation efficiency in galaxies but there must also be some other process at work. We also find that there is a significant but small difference in the star-formation efficiencies of galaxies with and without bars, in the sense that galaxies with bars have slightly higher star-formation efficiencies.

Accepted for publication in MNRAS

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