Double Bars, Inner Disks, and Nuclear Rings in Barred Galaxies

Erwin, Peter; Vega Beltrán, Juan Carlos; Beckman, John; Sparke, Linda S.
Bibliographical reference

The Central Kiloparsec of Starbursts and AGN: The La Palma Connection, ASP Conference Proceedings Vol. 249. Edited by J. H. Knapen, J. E. Beckman, I. Shlosman, and T. J. Mahoney. ISBN: 1-58381-089-7. San Francisco: Astronomical Society of the Pacific, 2001, p. 85.

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0
2001
Number of authors
4
IAC number of authors
3
Citations
6
Refereed citations
4
Description
We present results of a high-resolution imaging survey of barred S0--Sa galaxies which demonstrate that the central regions of these galaxies are surprisingly complex. We see many inner bars---small, secondary bars (typically less than a kiloparsec in radius) located inside of, and probably rotating faster than, the large primary bars. These are present in about one quarter to one third of all our sample. In contrast to some theoretical expectations, they do not seem to enhance AGN activity significantly. A third of barred S0s appear to host kiloparsec-scale disks within their bars; but the frequency of such inner disks is much lower in our S0/a and Sa galaxies. In addition, we find one example of a triple-barred galaxy, and two cases of purely stellar nuclear rings---probably the fossil remnants of past circumnuclear starbursts. We comment briefly on results from an ongoing analysis of known double-barred systems, extending to Hubble types as late as Sbc, and discuss their characteristic sizes and orientations.