Evidence for Secular Evolution of Disc Structural Parameters in Massive
  Barred Galaxies
  We address the effects of bar-driven secular evolution in discs by comparing
their properties in a sample of nearly 700 unbarred and barred (42 +- 3 per
cent of the population) massive disc galaxies (M* > 10^10 Msun). We make use of
accurate structural parameters derived from i-band bulge/disc/bar
decompositions to show that, as a population, barred discs tend to have fainter
central surface brightness (Delta mu_0 ~ 0.25 mag), and disc scale lengths that
are ~15 per cent larger than those of unbarred galaxies of the same stellar
mass. The corresponding distributions of mu_0 and h are statistically
inconsistent at the 5.2 sigma and 3.8 sigma levels, respectively. Bars rarely
occur in high-surface brightness discs, with less than 5 per cent of the barred
population having mu_0 < 19.5 mag arcsec^-2 -- compared to 20 per cent for
unbarred galaxies. They tend to reside in moderately blue discs, with a bar
fraction that peaks at (g-i)_disc ~ 0.95 mag and mildly declines for both bluer
and redder colours. These results demonstrate noticeable structural differences
between the discs of barred and unbarred galaxies, which we argue are the
result of bar-driven evolution -- in qualitative agreement with longstanding
theoretical expectations.
