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Issue A&A Volume 401, Number 3, April III 2003 Page(s) 975 - 984 Section Stellar clusters and associations DOI 10.1051/0004-6361:20030186

A&A 401, 975-984 (2003)
DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361:20030186

Kinematic response of the outer stellar disk to a central bar

G. Mühlbauer¹ and W. Dehnen<sup>1, 2

1</sup>  Max-Planck-Institut für Astronomie, Königstuhl 17, 69117 Heidelberg, Germany
²  Astrophysikalisches Institut Potsdam, An der Sternwarte 16, 14482 Potsdam, Germany
    e-mail: muehlbau@mpia.de; wdehnen@aip.de

(Received 10 December 2002 / Accepted 4 February 2003 )

Abstract
We study, using direct orbit integrations, the kinematic response of the outer stellar disk to the presence of a central bar, as in the Milky-Way. We find that the bar's outer Lindblad resonance (OLR) causes significant perturbations of the velocity moments. With increasing velocity dispersion, the radius of these perturbations is shifted outwards, beyond the nominal position of the OLR, but also the disk becomes less responsive. If we follow Dehnen (2000) in assuming that the OLR occurs just inside the Solar circle and that the Sun lags the bar major axis by ~ , we find (1) no significant radial motion of the local standard of rest (LSR), (2) a vertex deviation of ~ and (3) a lower ratio of the principal components of the velocity-dispersion tensor than for an unperturbed disk. All of these are actually consistent with the observations of the Solar-neighbourhood kinematics. Thus it seems that at least the lowest-order deviations of the local-disk kinematics from simple expectations based on axisymmetric equilibrium can be attributed entirely to the influence of the galactic bar.

Offprint request: W. Dehnen, wdehnen@aip.de

© ESO 2003

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