Searching for Bulges at the End of the Hubble Sequence

The dynamical evolution of super star clusters (SSCs) moving in the background of a dark matter halo has been investigated as a possible event responsible for the formation of bulges in late-type spirals. The underlying physical processes include sinking of SSCs due to the dynamical friction and stripping of SSCs on their way to the center. Our model calculations show that only sinking of circumnuclear SSCs contributes to the formation of galactic bulges at the early stage. B...

Recent progress on the structure and dynamics of bulges is reviewed. Those aspects that link galaxy bulges either to oblate spheroids akin to elliptical galaxies or to rapidly-rotating, flattened systems more nearly resembling the products of disk internal transformations, are highlighted. The analysis of surface brightness profiles derived from HST data is reviewed to show that unresolved nuclear components detected by HST have biased the determination of surface brightness ...

We study the innermost regions of bulges with surface brightness data derived from combined HST/NICMOS and ground-based NIR profiles. Bulge profiles to 1-2 kpc may be fit with Sersic laws, and show a trend with bulge-to-disk ratio: low-B/D bulges are roughly exponential, whereas higher-B/D bulges show increasing Sersic shape index $n$, indicating higher peak central densities and more extended brightness tails. N-body models of accretion of satellites onto disk-bulge-halo gal...

Properties of bars and bulges in the Hubble sequence are discussed, based on the analysis of 216 disk galaxies (S0s and spirals from NIRS0S and OSUBGS surveys, respectively). For that purpose we have collected together, and completed when necessary, the various analysis we have previously made separately for early and late types. We find strong photometric and kinematic evidence of pseudobulges in the S0-S0/a galaxies: their bulges are on average fairly exponential, inner dis...

We present a sample of edge-on spiral galaxies both of early and late types.The sample consists of 175 galaxies in the Ks-filter, 169 galaxies in the H-filter and 165 galaxies in the J-filter. Bulge and disc decompositions of each galaxy image, taken from the Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS), were performed. We discuss several scaling relations for bulges and discs which indicate a tight link between their formation and evolution. We show that galaxies with bulges fitted by ...

We study nine S0-Sb galaxies with (photometric) bulges consisting of two distinct components. The outer component is a flattened, kinematically cool, disklike structure: a "disky pseudobulge". Embedded inside is a rounder, kinematically hot spheroid: a "classical bulge". This indicates that pseudobulges and classical bulges are not mutually exclusive: some galaxies have both. The disky pseudobulges almost always have an exponential disk (scale lengths = 125-870 pc, mean $\s...

We present surface photometry for the central regions of a sample of 48 spiral galaxies (mostly unbarred and barred of types Sbc or Sc) observed with the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph on board the Hubble Space Telescope. Surface brightness profiles were derived and modeled with a Nuker law. We also analyzed archival Wide Field Planetary Camera~2 images with a larger field of view, available for 18 galaxies in our sample. We modeled the extracted bulge surface brightnes...

We study star formation rates (SFR) and stellar masses in bulges of nearby disk galaxies, using SFRs and stellar masses derived from Spitzer and GALEX data. At present day SFR the median pseudobulge could have grown the present day stellar mass in 8 Gyr. In almost all galaxies in our sample the specific SFR (SFR per unit stellar mass) of the bulge is higher than that of the outer disk, suggesting that almost all galaxies are increasing their B/T through internal star formatio...

Recent ground-based photometric investigations suggest that central regions of late-type spirals are closely coupled to the inner disk and probably formed via secular evolution. Evidence presented in support of this model includes the predominance of exponential bulges, the correlation of bulge and disk scale lengths, blueness of the bulge and small differences between bulge and central disk colors, detection of spiral structure into the core, and rapid rotation. Recent HST o...

We present photometric and morphological analyses of nuclear star clusters (NSCs) -- very dense, massive star clusters present in the central regions of most galaxies -- in a sample of 33 massive disk galaxies within 20 Mpc, part of the "Composite Bulges Survey." We use data from the Hubble Space Telescope including optical (F475W and F814W) and near-IR (F160W) images from the Wide Field Camera 3. We fit the images in 2D to take into account the full complexity of the inner r...