Understanding Bulges with Numerical Experiments
Victor Debattista (IfA, Zurich)
I describe two projects to understand bulges of disk galaxies and their
connection to bars. In the first project, I describe an N-body study of
the effect collisionless secular evolution has on bulge formation. One
channel of bulge formation which has been proposed is formation via the
secular evolution of bars. I use N-body simulations to demonstrate the
successes and failures of this hypothesis and describe some work in
progress to address some of the failures. I then address the triaxial bar
of our own Milky Way, and demonstrate a new dynamical model built with a
novel, and promising, new numerical method.
