The Impact of Feedback-driven Outflows on Bar Formation

Martin D. Weinberg

Published 2024-03-18Version 1

We investigate the coupling between the temporal variation from galaxy-formation feedback and the bar instability. We show that fluctuations from mass outflow on star-formation time scales affect the radial motion of disk orbits. The resulting incoherence in orbital phase leads to the disruption of the bar-forming dynamics. Bar formation is suppressed in starburst galaxies that have fluctuation time scales within the range 10 Myr to 200 Myr with repeated events with wind mass 15% of the disk within 0.5 scale lengths or 1.4% of the total disk mass. The work done by feedback is capable of reducing the amplitude or, with enough amplitude, destroying an existing bar. AGN feedback with similar amplitude and timescales would have similar behavior. To model the dynamics of the coupling and interpret the results of the full N-body simulations, we introduce a generalization of the Hamiltonian mean-field (HMF) model, drawing inspiration from the Lynden-Bell (1979) mechanism for bar growth. Our non-linear 'BarHMF' model is designed to reproduce linear perturbation theory in the low-amplitude limit. Notably, without star-formation feedback, this model exhibits exponential growth whose rate depends on disk mass and reproduces the expected saturation of bar growth observed in N-body simulations. We describe several promising applications of the BarHMF model beyond this study.