Tobias Geron finished his PhD in Astrophysics at the University of Oxford, UK, and he recently started as a Rubin fellow at the University of Toronto. Tobias spends his time between studying bars in galaxies and developing software to study transients with the upcoming Vera C. Rubin Observatory.
Title: The effects of bar kinematics and bar strength on galaxy evolution
Abstract: Roughly half of all disc galaxies have a bar, which has been known to affect galaxy evolution and quenching. More recent results suggest that the kinematics of the bar also play a significant role in galaxy evolution. We used the Tremaine-Weinberg method to study the bar pattern speeds, corotation radii and curly R of a sample of 225 strong and weak barred galaxies in MaNGA, the largest sample to date. We combine this with IFU data from MaNGA to study how bar strength and bar kinematics affect star formation in different regions of the bar. We find that strong bars in star forming galaxies have increased star formation in their centre and beyond the bar-end region, while star formation is suppressed in the arms of the bar. We also find that slow bars in star forming galaxies have significantly higher star formation along the bar than fast bars, especially if the bar is also strong. Interestingly, we find that the kinematics of the bar do not affect star formation globally, but changes where star formation occurs in the galaxy. We hypothesize that our findings can be explained by considering that slower bars encounter more gas as the stellar and gas discs rotate past them, leading to funneling of gas from the outskirts and disc regions of the galaxy to the bar. In short, we find that slow strong bars affect their hosts the most.
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