John Dubinski et al. 2009 ApJ 697 293 doi:10.1088/0004-637X/697/1/293
John Dubinski1, Ingo Berentzen2 and Isaac Shlosman3,4
Show affiliationsWe examine the bar instability in galactic models with an exponential disk and a cuspy dark matter (DM) halo with a Navarro-Frenk-White cosmological density profile. The equilibrium models are constructed from a three-integral composite distribution function but subject to the bar instability. We generate a sequence of models with a range of mass resolution from 1.8 K to 18 M particles in the disk and 10 K to 100 M particles in the halo along with a multimass model with an effective resolution of ~1010 particles. We describe how mass resolution affects the bar instability, including its linear growth phase, the buckling instability, pattern speed decay through the resonant transfer of angular momentum to the DM halo, and the possible destruction of the halo cusp. Our higher resolution simulations show a converging spectrum of discrete resonance interactions between the bar and DM halo orbits. As the pattern speed decays, orbital resonances sweep through most of the DM halo phase space and widely distribute angular momentum among the halo particles. The halo does not develop a flat density core and preserves the cusp, except in the region dominated by gravitational softening. The formation of the bar increases the central stellar density and the DM is compressed adiabatically increasing the halo central density by 1.7 times. Overall, the evolution of the bar displays a convergent behavior for halo particle numbers between 1 M and 10 M particles, when comparing bar growth, pattern speed evolution, the DM halo density profile and a nonlinear analysis of the orbital resonances. Higher resolution simulations clearly illustrate the importance of discrete resonances in transporting the angular momentum from the bar to the halo.
dark matter; galaxies: evolution; galaxies: kinematics and dynamics; galaxies: structure; methods: N-body simulations
Issue 1 (2009 May 20)
Received 2008 August 7, accepted for publication 2009 March 4
Published 2009 May 1
John Dubinski et al. 2009 ApJ 697 293
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