Cosmic Evolution of Barred Galaxies up to z ~ 0.84

TL;DR

This study investigates the evolution of barred galaxy properties over the last 7 billion years, finding that key features like bar length and strength remain largely unchanged, indicating a strong link between bar and disk evolution.

Contribution

It provides observational evidence that barred galaxy characteristics have remained stable over cosmic time, supporting simulation predictions of minimal evolution.

Findings

Bar length correlates with galaxy mass and disk scale length.

Normalized bar lengths show no significant evolution over time.

Bar strength and light deficit remain consistent across redshifts.

Abstract

We explore the cosmic evolution of the bar length, strength, and light deficit around the bar for 379 barred galaxies at 0.2 < z $\leq$ 0.835 using F814W images from the COSMOS survey. Our sample covers galaxies with stellar mass 10.0 $\leq$ log(M*/Msun) $\leq$ 11.4 and various Hubble types. The bar length is strongly related to the galaxy mass, the disk scale length (h), R50, and R90, where the last two are the radii containing 50 and 90% of total stellar mass, respectively. Bar length remains almost constant, suggesting little or no evolution in bar length over the last 7 Gyrs. The normalized bar lengths (Rbar/h, Rbar/R50, and Rbar/R90) do not show any clear cosmic evolution. Also, the bar strength (A2 and Qb) and the light deficit around the bar reveal little or no cosmic evolution. The constancy of the normalized bar lengths over cosmic time implies that the evolution of bars and of disks is strongly linked over all times. We discuss our results in the framework of predictions from numerical simulations. We conclude there is no strong disagreement between our results and up-to-date simulations.