4.7 Article

Peanuts, brezels and bananas: food for thought on the orbital structure of the Galactic bulge

Journal

MONTHLY NOTICES OF THE ROYAL ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY
Volume 450, Issue 1, Pages L66-L70

Publisher

OXFORD UNIV PRESS
DOI: 10.1093/mnrasl/slv048

Keywords

Galaxy: bulge; Galaxy: kinematics and dynamics; Galaxy: structure; galaxies: bulges; galaxies: structure

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Recent observations have discovered the presence of a box/peanut or X-shape structure in the Galactic bulge. Such box/peanut structures are common in external disc galaxies, and are well known in N-body simulations where they form following the buckling instability of a bar. From studies of analytical potentials and N-body models, it has been claimed in the past that box/peanut bulges are supported by 'bananas', or x(1)v(1) orbits. We present here a set of N-body models where instead the peanut bulge is mainly supported by brezel-like orbits, allowing strong peanuts to form with short extent relative to the bar length. This shows that stars in the X-shape do not necessarily stream along banana orbits which follow the arms of the X-shape. The brezel orbits are also found to be the main orbital component supporting the peanut shape in our recent made-to-measure dynamical models of the Galactic bulge. We also show that in these models the fraction of stellar orbits that contribute to the X-structure account for 40-45 per cent of the stellar mass.

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