We measure the non-axisymmetry in the luminosity distribution in the central few kpc of a sample of advanced mergers of galaxies, by analyzing their 2MASS images. All mergers show a high central asymmetry: the centres of isophotes show a striking sloshing pattern with a spatial variation of upto 30% within the central 1 kpc; and the Fourier amplitude for lopsidedness (m = 1) shows high values upto 0.2 within the central 5 kpc. The central asymmetry is estimated to be long-lived, lasting for ~ a few Gyr or ~ 100 local dynamical timescales. This will significantly affect the dynamical evolution of this region, by helping fuel the central active galactic nucleus, and also by causing the secular growth of the bulge driven by lopsidedness.

We study the structure and stellar populations of the luminous elliptical galaxies dominating fossil groups and compare them with the brightest galaxies in ordinary groups. Despite being over-luminous, the fossil central galaxies do not show boxy stellar isophotes which are usually associated with luminous elliptical galaxies. Boxy isophotes, according to the numerical simulations, are produced in gas poor mergers. The isophotal shapes of the fossil central galaxies, therefore, suggest a gas rich merger for fossil central galaxies. Using a two-component spectral fitting, we show that the dominant stellar population of the fossil and non-fossil galaxies is old and the second population is either old or intermediate age. However, the second stellar component (recently-formed stars) in fossil central galaxies is significantly more metal poor than that in the brightest galaxies of non-fossil groups.

The case is outlined for a new galaxy survey, including spectroscopy with AAOmega and sub-arcsecond multi-band imaging, that bridges a crucial gap between the SDSS and VVDS surveys. The science focus is to study structure and the relationship between matter and light on kpc-to-Mpc scales. The range of scales probed will enable direct constraints on the Cold Dark Matter model by: (1) measuring the halo mass function down to and its evolution to z ~ 0.4; (2) measuring the galaxy stellar mass function to very low mass limits of constraining baryonic feedback processes; and (3) quantifying the environment-dependent merger rate since z ~ 0.4. Here, we highlight the fact that the high-resolution imaging will enable the bulge-disk decomposition of ~200000 galaxies in u–K, providing a valuable resource for statistical studies of bulge properties.

Based on a NIR morphological study of 25 galaxies in eight Compact Groups (CGs), we find that the galaxies are not in equilibrium but in a process of transformation: late-type galaxies morphological change into earlier types. As much as half of the galaxies in our sample show evidence of ongoing or past mergers.We identify tidal stripping and mergers as the process responsible of this transformation. Our observations also suggest that galaxies in CGs merge more frequently under “dry” conditions (i.e. once they have lost most of their gas).

The class ‘bulges’ contains objects with very different formation and evolution paths and very different properties. I review two types of ‘bulges’, the boxy/peanut bulges (B/Ps) and the discy bulges. The former are parts of bars seen edge-on, have their origin in vertical instabilities of the disc and are somewhat shorter in extent than bars. Their stellar population is similar to that of the inner part of the disc from which they formed. Discy bulges have a disc-like outline, i.e., seen face-on they are circular or oval and seen edge-on they are thin. Their extent is of the order of 5 times smaller than that of the boxy/peanut bulges. They form from the inflow of mainly gaseous material to the centre of the galaxy and from subsequent star formation. They thus contain a lot of young stars and gas. Bulges of different types often coexist in the same galaxy. I review the main known results on these two types of bulges and present new simulation results.

B/Ps form about 1Gyr after the bar, via a vertical buckling. At that time the bar strength decreases, its inner part becomes thicker – forming the peanut or boxy shape – and the ratio increases. A second buckling episode is seen in simulations with strong bars, also accompanied by a thickening of the peanut and a weakening of the bar. The properties of the B/Ps correlate strongly with those of the bar: stronger bars have stronger peanuts, a more flat-topped vertical density distribution and have experienced more bucklings.

I also present simulations of disc galaxy formation, which include the formation of a discy bulge. Decomposition of their radial density profile into an exponential disc and a Sérsic bulge gives realistic values for the disc and bulge scale-lengths and mass ratios, and a Sérsic shape index of the order of 1.

It is thus clear that classical bulges, B/P bulges and discy bulges are three distinct classes of objects and that lumping them together can lead to confusion. To avoid this, the two latter could be called B/P features and inner discs, respectively.

Boxy/peanut bulges in disk galaxies have been associated to stellar bars. In this talk, we discuss the different properties of such bulges and their relation with the corresponding bar, using a very large sample of a few hundred numerical N-body simulations. We present and inter-compare various methods of measuring the boxy/peanut bulge properties, namely its strength, shape and possible asymmetry. Some of these methods can be applied to both simulations and observations. Our final goal is to get correlations that will allow us to obtain information on the boxy/peanut bulge for a galaxy viewed face-on as well as information on the bars of galaxies viewed edge-on.

Observational and theoretical evidence that internal, slow (“secular”) evolution reshapes galaxy disks is reviewed in Kormendy & Kennicutt (2004). This update has three aims. First, I emphasize that this evolution is very general – it is as fundamental to the evolution of galaxy disks as (e. g.) core collapse is to globular clusters, as the production of hot Jupiters is to the evolution of protoplanetary disks, and as evolution to red giants containing proto-white-dwarfs is to stellar evolution. One consequence for disk galaxies is the buildup of dense central components that get mistaken for classical (i. e., merger-built) bulges but that were grown out of disk stars and gas. We call these pseudobulges. Second, I review new results on pseudobulge star formation and structure and on the distinction between boxy and disky pseudobulges. Finally, I highlight how these results make a galaxy formation problem more acute. How can hierarchical clustering produce so many pure disk galaxies with no evidence for merger-built bulges?

Close examination of “pseudobulges” in several early-type disk galaxies indicates that they are actually composite structures consisting of both a flattened, kinematically cool disklike structure (“disky pseudobulge”) and a rounder, kinematically hot spheroidal structure (“classical bulge”). This indicates that pseudobulges, thought to form from internal secular evolution, and classical bulges, thought to form from rapid mergers, are not exclusive phenomena: some galaxies can have both.

Image decomposition of galaxies is now routinely used to estimate the structural parameters of galactic components. In this work, I address questions on the reliability of this technique. In particular, do bars and AGN need to be taken into account to obtain the structural parameters of bulges and discs? And to what extent can we trust image decomposition when the physical spatial resolution is relatively poor? With this aim, I performed multi-component (bar/bulge/disc/AGN) image decomposition of a sample of very nearby galaxies and their artificially redshifted images, and verified the effects of removing the bar and AGN components from the models. Neglecting bars can result in a overestimation of the bulge-to-total luminosity ratio of a factor of two, even if the resolution is low. Similar effects result when bright AGN are not considered in the models, but only when the resolution is high. I also show that the structural parameters of more distant galaxies can in general be reliably retrieved, at least up to the point where the physical spatial resolution is ≈ 1.5 Kpc, but bulge parameters are prone to errors if its effective radius is small compared to the seeing radius, and might suffer from systematic effects. I briefly discuss the consequences of these results to our knowledge of the stellar mass budget in the local universe, and finish by showing preliminary results from a large SDSS sample on the dichotomy between classical and pseudo-bulges.

To study the distribution of star formation and dust emission within nearby galaxies, we measured five morphological parameters in the 24 μm wave band for 73 galaxies observed as part of the Spitzer Infrared Nearby Galaxies Survey. The morphological parameters demonstrate strong variations along the Hubble sequence, including statistically significant differences between S0/a-Sab and Sc-Sd galaxies. Early-type spiral galaxies are generally found to be compact, centralized, symmetric sources in the 24 μm band, whereas late-type spiral galaxies are generally found to be extended, asymmetric 24 μm sources. These results suggest that processes that increase the real or apparent sizes of galaxies' bulges also lead to more centralized 24 μm emission.

The dynamics of a barred galaxy depends on the pattern speed of its bar. The only direct method for measuring the pattern speed of a bar is the Tremaine-Weinberg technique. This method is best suited to the analysis of the distribution and dynamics of the stellar component. Therefore it has been mostly used for early-type barred galaxies. Most of them host a classical bulge. On the other hand, a variety of indirect methods, which are based on the analysis of the distribution and dynamics of the gaseous component, has been used to measure the bar pattern speed in late-type barred galaxies. Nearly all the measured bars are as rapidly rotating as they can be. By comparing this result with high-resolution numerical simulations of bars in dark matter halos, it is possible to conclude that these bars reside in maximal disks.

The thickening of the bar in barred disk galaxies has a strong influence in shaping the morphology in the inner regions of a disk galaxy above the galactic plane. The result of such a secular evolutionary process can be observed in galaxies with box/peanut shaped (b/ps) bulges. We have applied a one–dimensional fitting method to our sample of 30 edge–on disk galaxies using different fitting function approaches. A clear increase in scale height can be observed in the area of the most prominent b/ps isophotes compared to the neighbouring disk and bulge areas, in agreement with the predictions of the bar thickening model.

Using the gravitational torque indicator Qb, we derive the distribution of bar strengths for a sample of early-type disk galaxies. The sample is part of the Near-Infrared S0 Survey (NIRS0S), designed to examine the properties of bars, bulges, and disks in galaxies classified as types S0− to Sa. Although the survey is only partly finished, we find that the distribution of bar strengths in S0 galaxies differs from that in spirals by lacking an extended tail to high values of Qb. No S0 in our current sample has Qb > 0.25, while spirals extend to Qb ≈ 0.7. Bars having Qb > 0.25 first appear among S0/a to Sa galaxies.

We present high sensitivity radio polarimetric (VLA) observations of a galaxy with strong orbital resonances – NGC 4736. The total radio intensity at 8.4 GHz covers smoothly the whole galaxy bulge and reveals a distinct ring of radio emission closely related to the ring morphology visible in infrared, CO and Hα emission. However, the magnetic field reveals a very coherent spiral pattern. The magnetic field vectors are crossing the inner starbursting ring, the dust lanes within the ring and other rather circularly shaped features visible in other gas traces. Either the magnetic field uncovers the pattern of gas motions not seen in other spectral ranges, or the spiral magnetic field is of a pure dynamo origin, ignoring the ringed morphology of the galaxy.

We present images of a number of lenticular galaxies which appear to be undergoing evolutionary processes such as ram-pressure stripping or gravitational interactions, or possess features indicative of some evolutionary process in the recent past, such as fossil spiral arms, a polar ring-like structure, or a warped disk with box-peanut bulge. All the galaxies were originally identified on digitally co-added photographic plates or films from the UK Schmidt Telescope, showing that such material is still useful in spite of the modern digital surveys available. In some cases CCD follow up is presented.

We have carried out a kinematical and stellar population analysis of the double-barred galaxy NGC357 to provide a more complete characterization of these systems and their role in the formation of galaxy bulges. We clearly identify the presence of the inner bar in the radial velocity and velocity dispersion profiles. The age, metallicity and [Mg/Fe] abundance ratio estimates are very similar to those of ellipticals of equivalent central σ. The [Mg/Fe] value for the bulge of this galaxy suggests formation timescales shorter than 1Gyr.

Traditionally, the study of the structural parameters of galaxies have been used to understand the bulge formation processes. However, one piece lost in this study is the three-dimensional shape of the bulges. In this work, the structural parameters of a magnitude-limited sample of 148 unbarred S0-Sb galaxies were derived to study the correlations between bulge and disk parameters as well as the probability distribution function (PDF) of the intrinsic equatorial ellipticity of bulges. A new algorithm (GASP-2D) was used to perform the bidimensional bulge-disk decomposition of J-band galaxy images extracted from the archive of the 2MASS survey. The PDF of intrinsic ellipticities was derived from the distribution of the observed ellipticities of bulges and misalignments between bulges and disks. About 80% of bulges in S0-Sb galaxies are not oblate but triaxial ellipsoids. Their mean axial ratio in the equatorial plane is 〈B/A〉=0.85. There is not significant dependence of their PDF on morphology, light concentration, and luminosity. The scenarios in which bulges assembled from mergers and/or grew over long times through disk secular evolution have to be tested against the derived PDF of bulge intrinsic ellipticities.

The bulges of spiral galaxies may be old, as in our Galaxy, or may possess younger stars, as evidenced in spectroscopic line strengths in some external bulges. Bulges look similar to elliptical galaxies, but their formation history is expected to differ due to the presence of the disc and different formation mechanisms. This project extends the numbers of high signal-to-noise, broad coverage spectra to a larger sample of bulges in order to test conflicting ideas about their age distributions. New Gemini long-slit observations will be used to derive stellar population ages and histories across 30 bulges. Here we present preliminary results from the sample.

We report about the fact that the stellar population that is born in the gas inflowing towards the central regions can be vertically unstable leading to a B/PS feature remarkably bluer that the surrounding bulge. Using new chemodynamical simulations we show that this young population does not remain as flat as the gaseous nuclear disc and buckles out of the plane to form a new boxy bulge. We show that such a young B/PS bulge can be detected in colour maps.

The gas component plays a major role in the dynamics of spiral galaxies, because of its dissipative character, and its ability to exchange angular momentum with stars in the disk. Due to its small velocity dispersion, it triggers gravitational instabilities, and the corresponding non-axisymmetric patterns produce gravity torques, which mediate these angular momentum exchanges. When a srong bar pattern develops with the same pattern speed all over the disk, only gas inside corotation can flow towards the center. But strong bars are not long lived in presence of gas, and multiple-speed spiral patterns can develop between bar phases, and help the galaxy to accrete external gas flowing from cosmic filaments. The gas is then intermittently driven to the galaxy center, to form nuclear starbursts and fuel an active nucleus. The various time-scales of these gaseous flows are described.