Effects of Inner Halo Angular Momentum on the Peanut/X-shapes of Bars

TL;DR

This study uses N-body simulations to explore how the inner halo angular momentum influences the evolution and shape of galactic bars, revealing new insights into buckling behavior and peanut-shaped structures.

Contribution

It demonstrates that inner halo spin significantly affects bar buckling, strength, and peanut shape, challenging previous assumptions about angular momentum's role.

Findings

Higher halo spin triggers earlier buckling.

Bar strength remains relatively stable post-buckling.

High-spin halos produce more pronounced peanut shapes.

Abstract

Cosmological simulations show that dark matter halos surrounding baryonic disks have a wide range of angular momenta, measured by the spin parameter ($\lambda$). In this study, we bring out the importance of inner angular momentum($<$30 kpc), measured in terms of the halo spin parameter, on the secular evolution of the bar using N-body simulations. We have varied the halo spin parameter $\lambda$ from 0 to 0.1 for co-rotating (prograde) spinning halos and one counter-rotating (retrograde) halo spin ($\lambda$=-0.1) with respect to the disk. We report that as the halo spin increases, the buckling is also triggered earlier and is followed by a second buckling phase in high-spin halo models. The timescale for the second buckling is significantly longer than the first buckling. We find that bar strength does not reduce significantly after the buckling in all of our models, which provides new insights about the role of inner halo angular momentum, unlike previous studies. Also, the buckled bar can still transfer significant angular momentum to the halo in the secular evolution phase, but it reduces with increasing halo spin. In the secular evolution phase, the bar strength increases and saturates to nearly equal values for all the models irrespective of halo spin and the sense of rotation with respect to the disk. The final boxy/peanut shape is more pronounced ($\sim$20 $\%$) in high spin halos having higher angular momentum in the inner region compared to non-rotating halos. We explain our results with angular momentum exchanges between the disk and halo.