Simulated Bars May Be Shorter but Are Not Slower Than Those Observed: TNG50 versus MaNGA

Galactic bars are prominent dynamical structures within disk galaxies whose size, formation time, strength, and pattern speed influence the dynamical evolution of their hosts' galaxies. Yet, their formation and evolution in a cosmological context is not well understood, as cosmological simulation studies have been limited by the classic trade-off between simulation volume and resolution. Here we analyze barred disk galaxies in the cosmological magnetohydrodynamical simulation TNG50 and quantitatively compare the distributions of bar size and pattern speed to those from MaNGA observations at z = 0. TNG50 galaxies are selected to match the stellar mass and size distributions of observed galaxies, to account for observational selection effects. We find that the high resolution of TNG50 yields bars with a wide range of pattern speeds (including those with >= 40 km s(-1) kpc(-1)) and a mean value of similar to 36 km s(-1) kpc larger than those from observations by only 6 km s(-1) kpc(-1), in contrast with previous lower-resolution cosmological simulations that produced bars that were too slow. We find, however, that the bars in TNG50 are on average similar to 35% shorter than observed, although this discrepancy may partly reflect the remaining inconsistencies in the simulation-data comparison. This leads to higher values of Z = R-corot/R-b in TNG50, but points to simulated bars being too short rather than too slow. After repeating the analysis on the lower-resolution run of the same simulation (with the same physical model), we qualitatively reproduce the results obtained in previous studies: this implies that, along with physical model variations, numerical resolution effects may explain the previously found slowness of simulated bars.

Automated summary

This study analyzes barred disk galaxies in the cosmological magnetohydrodynamical simulation TNG50 and compares their bar size and pattern speed distributions to observations. It finds that the high resolution of TNG50 yields bars with a wide range of pattern speeds, in contrast to previous lower-resolution simulations. However, the bars in TNG50 are on average shorter than observed, suggesting a discrepancy in the simulation-data comparison. The study also suggests that numerical resolution effects may explain the previously found slowness of simulated bars.