Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

The Impact Of Bars On Disk Breaks As Probed By S⁴G Imaging, Juan Carlos Muñoz-Mateos, Trisha Mizusawa

Aerospace, Physics, and Space Science Faculty Publications

We have analyzed the radial distribution of old stars in a sample of 218 nearby face-on disks, using deep 3.6μm images from the Spitzer Survey of Stellar Structure in Galaxies. In particular, we have studied the structural properties of those disks with a broken or down-bending profile. We find that, on average, disks with a genuine single-exponential profile have a scale length and a central surface brightness which are intermediate to those of the inner and outer components of a down-bending disk with the same total stellar mass. In the particular case of barred galaxies, the ratio between the break …