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E. I. Barnes (Louisiana State University)
Considerable effort has been exerted to understand the formation and evolution of barred galaxies. Usually, this involves N-body simulations, orbital analysis of analytical potentials, or some combination of the two. We present an orbital analysis of a rotating bar potential that is created by a self-consistent, gaseous density distribution. The gaseous bar has been created using a finite-difference hydrodynamics code, and appears to be a unique potential-density pair. In an effort to understand the stellar distribution function that would arise in such a bar, we study 2D orbits in the equatorial plane of the bar as well as fully 3D orbits. We find that, unlike previous studies, the dominant 2D regular stellar orbital family is not the x1 family. It is intstead a bowtie-shaped orbit related to the 4/1 orbits identified by Contopoulos. We also discuss the importance of quasi-ergodic orbits as well as the possible impact on bulge formation and AGN fueling models.
This work has been supported, in part, by funding from the U.S. National Science Foundation through grant AST 99-87344 and from NASA/LaSPACE under grant NGT5-40035.
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The author(s) of this abstract have provided an email address for comments about the abstract: barnes@physics.lsu.edu