Star formation and bar instability in cosmological haloes

TL;DR

This study investigates how star formation influences bar instability in cosmological galaxy disks, showing that star formation enhances bar strength and affects pattern speed without destroying the stellar bar.

Contribution

It provides the first analysis of star formation effects on bar instability within a consistent cosmological simulation framework, extending previous work without star formation.

Findings

Star formation enhances the stellar bar strength.

The stellar bar persists for 10 Gyr at z=0.

Star formation has a mild effect on bar ellipticity.

Abstract

This is the third of a series of papers presenting the first attempt to analyze the growth of the bar instability in a consistent cosmological scenario. In the previous two articles we explored the role of the cosmology on stellar disks, and the impact of the gaseous component on a disk embedded in a cosmological dark matter halo. The aim of this paper is to point out the impact of the star formation on the bar instability inside disks having different gas fractions. We perform cosmological simulations of the same disk-to-halo mass systems as in the previous works where the star formation was not triggered. We compare the results of the new simulations with the previous ones to investigate the effect of the star formation by analysing the morphology of the stellar components, the bar strength, the behaviour of the pattern speed. We follow the gas and the central mass concentration during the evolution and their impact on the bar strength. In all our cosmological simulations a stellar bar, lasting 10 Gyr, is still living at z=0. The central mass concentration of gas and of the new stars has a mild action on the ellipticity of the bar but is not able to destroy it; at z=0 the stellar bar strength is enhanced by the star formation. The bar pattern speed is decreasing with the disk evolution.