Inner rings in disc galaxies: dead or alive

TL;DR

This study distinguishes passive and active inner rings in disc galaxies, finding passive rings only in early types and suggesting a resonance origin with a dissolution timescale of about 200 million years.

Contribution

It provides the first comprehensive analysis of star formation activity in inner rings across galaxy types using multi-wavelength data.

Findings

Passive rings are only found in early-type disc galaxies.

Approximately 21-28% of rings are passive depending on the indicator.

Passive rings tend to be wider and include more ring-lenses, supporting a resonance origin.

Abstract

In this Letter, I distinguish "passive" inner rings as those with no current star formation, as distinct from "active" inner rings that have undergone recent star formation. I built a sample of nearby galaxies with inner rings observed in the near- and mid-infrared from the NIRS0S and the S4G surveys. I used archival far-ultraviolet (FUV) and H\alpha\ imaging of 319 galaxies to diagnose whether their inner rings are passive or active. I found that passive rings are found only in early-type disc galaxies (-3<=T<=2). In this range of stages, 21+-3% and 28+-5% of the rings are passive according to the FUV and H\alpha\ indicators, respectively. A ring that is passive according to the FUV is always passive according to H\alpha, but the reverse is not always true. Ring-lenses form 30-40% of passive rings, which is four times more than the fraction of ring-lenses found in active rings in the stage range -3<=T<=2. This is consistent with both a resonance and a manifold origin for the rings because both models predict purely stellar rings to be wider than their star-forming counterparts. In the case of resonance rings, the widening may be at least partly due to the dissolution of rings. If most inner rings have a resonance origin, I estimate 200Myr to be a lower bound for their dissolution time-scale. This time-scale is of the order of one orbital period at the radius of inner rings.