Arm morphology in off-centre barred galaxies

Abstract

Many barred galaxies, including the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), display strong lopsidedness and off-centre bars. The dynamical connection between bar-disc misalignments, internal mass asymmetries, and arm morphology is not yet fully characterised. We investigate how internal mass imbalances within the bar and global offsets between the bar and the centre of mass of the system modify the equilibrium-point structure and the invariant manifolds that organise arms. We construct a barred galaxy model which includes an off-centred and asymmetric in shape bar. Using numerical continuation, we track the position, stability, and bifurcations of the Lagrangian equilibrium points as functions of the displacement of the asymmetric mass component along the bar and of the offset between the bar and the system's centre of mass. For representative configurations we compute the invariant manifolds of planar Lyapunov orbits around unstable points and analyse the resulting arm structures. Internal bar lopsidedness and modest bar-disc offsets that keep the centre of mass inside the bar preserve the classical configuration with five equilibrium points, but strongly distort the associated invariant manifolds, producing two arms with different densities and shapes. The bar-disc offset reaches a threshold at the point at which the galactic centre of mass exits the bar ellipsoid, in which a pitchfork bifurcation removes the collinear unstable points and the system transitions to a three-equilibrium-point configuration in which a single unstable point and its associated manifold supports one arm. This framework is compatible with the observed correlation between off-centre bars and photometric lopsidedness, and it provides a dynamical explanation for the strongly asymmetric arm morphology of galaxies such as the LMC.