论文部分内容阅读
A vertical X-shaped structure in the Galactic bulge was recently reported.Here wepresent evidence of a similar X-shaped structure in the Shen et al.(2010) bar/boxybulge model that simultaneously matches the stellar kinematics successfully.TheX-shaped structure is found in the central region of our bar/boxy bulge model,and is qualitatively consistent with the observed one in many aspects.End-to-endseparations of the X-shaped structure in the radial and vertical directions are roughly3 kpc and 1.8 kpc, respectively.The X-shaped structure contains about 7% of lightin the boxy bulge region, but it is significant enough to be identified in observations.An X-shaped structure naturally arises in the formation of bar/boxy bulges, andis mainly associated with orbits trapped around the vertically-extended x1 family.Like the bar in our model, the X-shaped structure tilts away from the Sun-Galacticcenter line by 20°.The X-shaped structure becomes increasingly symmetric aboutthe disk plane, so the observed symmetry may indicate that it formed at least afew billion years ago.The existence of the vertical X-shaped structure suggests thatthe formation of the Milky Way bulge is shaped mainly by internal disk dynamicalinstabilities. Recently, with the commissioning observation of APOGEE, a cold high-velocitypeak was reported in several bulge fields, which are suspected to be stellar orbitsrelated to the bar.We use the same Milky Way N-body model from Shen et al.(2010) to test the existence of this velocity structure in the bulge region.We comparethe bulge kinematics between our model and the current observations (BRAVA andAPOGEE).Our results show that the radial velocity range of the model are consistentwith the observed stars in the same field.However, in the bulge region, neither ourmodel or the BRAVA radial velocity reveal another high-velocity peak.Thus wedisagree with the previous claim that this high velocity feature is produced by thebar structure.Based on our model, the radial velocity distribution of stars in thebar region should be widely distributed. We also investigate the structure of this simulated barred galaxy via the observational method.From face-n and edge-on views, we project the 3D simulation to2D mock images.For the face-on image, radial profiles of the ellipticity and positionangle of elliptical isophotes clearly show a barred feature, with bar length ~ 4 kpc.Light profiles along the major axis of the bar are decomposed into multiple components.We find that the bar can be best described by two structures, i.e., an innerthick boxy component and an extended thin component.They correspond two typesof stellar orbits in bars.We show that such an observational method can be quiteuseful in analyzing the structure of simulated galaxies. CGS (Carnegie-Irvine Galaxies Survey) is a complete survey of 605 bright nearbygalaxies with all kinds of morphologies in the southern hemisphere.The imagequality is quite high in terms of the signal-to-noise ratio and the seeing.We selectface-on and moderately inclined disk galaxies from this survey.Based on this sample,we develop an improved and more accurate method on the bar identification andmeasurement.We also study correlations between different types of bars and theirhosts.