Juntai Shen — Page 6

arXiv2003

The AGN-Disk Dynamics Connection

Any connection between central activity and the large-scale dynamics of disk galaxies requires an efficient mechanism to remove angular momentum from the orbiting material. The only viable means of achieving inflow from kiloparsec scales is through gravitational stresses created by bars and/or mergers. The inflow of gas in bars today appears to stall at a radius of few hundred parsec, however, forming a nuclear ring. Here we suggest that bars in the early Universe may have avoided this problem, and propose that the progenitors of central supermassive black holes (SMBHs) are created by gas that is driven deep into the centers of galaxies by bars in the early stages of disk formation. The coincidence of the QSO epoch with galaxy formation, the short lifetimes of QSOs, and the existence of SMBHs in the centers of most bright galaxies are all naturally accounted for by disk dynamics in this model. The progenitor SMBHs are the seeds for brighter QSO flares during galaxy mergers. We present a new study of bar weakening by central mass concentrations, which shows that bars are less easily destroyed than previously thought. An extremely massive and compact central mass can, however, dissolve the bar, which creates a pseudo-bulge component in the center of the disk.

astro-ph↗

arXiv2003

The Survival of Bars with Central Mass Concentrations

Many barred galaxies today harbor massive concentrations of gas in their centers, and some are known to possess supermassive black holes (SBHs) and their associated stellar cusps. Previous theoretical work has suggested that a bar in a galaxy could be dissolved by the formation of a mass concentration in the center, although the precise mass and degree of central concentration required is not well-established. Here we report an extensive study of the effects of central masses on bars in high-quality N-body simulations of galaxies. We study models containing both strong and weak bars, and quantify the change in bar amplitude as a mass concentration is grown in their centers. We find that bars are more robust than previously thought. We have varied the growth rate of the central mass, its final mass and the degree of concentration of the mass. Our main conclusions are: (1) the central mass has to be as large as several percent of the disk mass to completely destroy the bar; (2) for a given mass, objects whose scale-length is a few pc or less cause the greatest reduction in bar amplitude, while significantly more diffuse objects have a lesser effect; and (3) the bar amplitude always decreases as the central mass is grown, and continues to decay thereafter on a cosmological timescale. Thus the masses of SBHs are probably too small, even when dressed with a stellar cusp, to affect the bar amplitude significantly.

astro-ph↗