# Bars & boxy/peanut bulges in thin & thick discs: I. Morphology and line-of-sight velocities of a fiducial model

## TL;DR

This study uses N-body simulations to analyze how thin and thick disc stellar populations in barred galaxies develop distinct morphologies and line-of-sight velocities in their boxy/peanut bulges, revealing differences driven by their initial kinematic states.

## Contribution

It provides a detailed comparison of the morphological and kinematic differences between thin and thick disc stars in barred galaxy bulges using simulations.

## Key findings

- Thin disc bars are stronger and more elongated than thick disc bars.
- Thick disc boxy/peanut bulges are weaker and more boxy, with signatures farther from the plane.
- Thick disc stars can have higher line-of-sight velocities than thin disc stars in the bulge region.

## Abstract

We explore trends in the morphology and line-of-sight (los) velocity of stellar populations in the inner regions of disc galaxies, using N-body simulations with both a thin (kinematically cold) and a thick (kinematically hot) disc which form a bar and boxy/peanut (b/p) bulge. The bar in the thin disc component is $\sim$50\% stronger than the thick disc bar and is more elongated, with an axis ratio almost half that of the thick disc bar. The thin disc b/p bulge has a pronounced X-shape, while the thick disc b/p is weaker with a rather boxy shape. This leads to the signature of the b/p bulge in the thick disc to be weaker and further away from the plane than in the thin disc. Regarding the kinematics, we find that the los velocity of thick disc stars in the outer parts of the b/p bulge can be \emph{larger} than that of thin disc stars, by up to 40\% and 20\% for side-on and Milky Way-like orientations of the bar respectively. This is due to the different orbits followed by thin and thick disc stars in the bar-b/p region, which are affected by the fact that: i) thin disc stars are trapped more efficiently in the bar - b/p instability and thus lose more angular momentum than their thick disc counterparts and ii) thick disc stars have large radial excursions and therefore stars from large radii with high angular momenta can be found in the bar region. We also find that the difference between the los velocities of the thin and thick disc in the b/p bulge ($\Delta v_{los}$) correlates with the initial difference between the radial velocity dispersions of the two discs ($\Delta \sigma$) . We therefore conclude that stars in the bar - b/p bulge will have considerably different morphologies and kinematics depending on the kinematic properties of the disc population they originate from.