Bars and boxy/peanut bulges in thin and thick discs. II. Can bars form in hot thick discs?

TL;DR

This study uses N-body simulations to explore how thick galactic discs influence bar formation, showing that bars can form in hot thick discs and are affected by various dynamical parameters, with implications for understanding galaxy evolution.

Contribution

It demonstrates that bars can form in hot thick discs across diverse conditions and compares the predictive power of different instability criteria.

Findings

Bars form in most models, even with massive thick discs.

Stronger bars are linked to greater angular momentum loss and radial heating.

The Ostriker-Peeble criterion better predicts bar instability than the Efstathiou-Lake-Negroponte criterion.

Abstract

The Milky Way as well as a majority of external galaxies possess a thick disc. However, the dynamical role of the (geometrically) thick disc on the bar formation and evolution is not fully understood. Here, we investigate the effect of thick discs in bar formation and evolution by means of a suite of N-body models of (kinematically cold) thin-(kinematically hot) thick discs. We systematically vary the mass fraction of the thick disc, the thin-to-thick disc scale length ratio as well as thick disc's scale height to examine the bar formation under diverse dynamical scenarios. Bars form almost always in our models, even in presence of a massive thick disc. The part of the bar constituted by the thick disc closely follows the overall growth and temporal evolution of the part of the bar constituted by the thin disc, only the part of the bar in the thick disc is weaker than the part of the bar in the thin disc. The formation of stronger bars is associated with a simultaneous larger loss of angular momentum and a larger radial heating. In addition, we demonstrate a preferential loss of angular momentum and a preferential radial heating of disc stars, along the azimuthal direction within the extent of the bar, in both thin and thick disc stars. For purely thick disc models (without any thin disc), the bar formation critically depends on the disc scale length and scale height. A larger scale length and/or a larger vertical scale height delays the bar formation time and/or suppresses the bar formation almost completely in thick-disc-only models. We find that the Ostriker-Peeble criterion predicts the bar instability scenarios in our models better than the Efstathiou-Lake-Negroponte criterion.