Secular Evolution and Structural Properties of Stellar Bars in Galaxies
  I present results from the modeling of stellar bars in nearly 300 barred
galaxies in the local universe through parametric multi-component multi-band
image fitting. The surface brightness radial profile of bars is described using
a Sersic function, and parameters such as bar effective radius, ellipticity,
boxiness, length and mass, and bar-to-total luminosity and mass ratios, are
determined, which is unprecedented for a sample of this size. The properties of
bars in galaxies with classical bulges and pseudo-bulges are compared. For a
fixed bar-to-total mass ratio, pseudo-bulges are on average significantly less
massive than classical bulges, indicating that, if pseudo-bulges are formed
through bars, further processes are necessary to build a classical bulge. I
find a correlation between bar ellipticity and boxiness, and define a new
parameter as the product of these two quantities. I also find correlations
between this product and normalised bar size, between the sizes of bars and
bulges, and between normalised bar size and bulge-to-total ratio. Bars with
different ellipticities follow parallel lines in the latter two correlations.
These correlations can arise if, starting off with different normalised sizes
and ellipticities, bars grow longer and stronger with dynamical age, as a
result of angular momentum exchange from the inner to the outer parts of
galaxies, consistent with previous theoretical predictions. A plausible
consequence is that bar pattern speeds should become lower with bar dynamical
age, and towards galaxies with more prominent bulges.
