Photometric decomposition of barred galaxies

We present a nonparametric method for decomposition of the light of disk galaxies into disk, bulge, and bar components. We have developed and tested the method on a sample of 68 disk galaxies for which we have acquired I-band photometry. The separation of disk and bar light relies on the single assumption that the bar is a straight feature with a different ellipticity and position angle from that of the projected disk. Here we present the basic method, but we recognize that it can be significantly refined. We identify bars in only 47% of the more nearly face-on galaxies in our sample. The fraction of light in the bar has a broad range, from 1.3% to 40% of the total galaxy light. If low-luminosity galaxies have more dominant halos, and if halos contribute to bar stability, the luminosity functions of barred and unbarred galaxies should differ markedly; while our sample is small, we find only a slight difference of low significance.