Paper detail

Explaining the formation of bulges with MOND

In the cold dark matter (CDM) paradigm, bulges easily form through galaxy mergers, either major or minor, or through clumpy disks in the early universe, where clumps are driven to the center by dynamical friction. Also pseudo-bulges, with a more disky morphology and kinematics, can form more slowly through secular evolution of a bar, where resonant stars are elevated out of the plane, in a peanut/box shape. As a result, in CDM cosmological simulations, it is very difficult to find a bulgeless galaxy, while they are observed very frequently in the local universe. A different picture emerges in alternative models of the missing mass problem. In MOND (MOdified Newtonian Dynamics), galaxy mergers are much less frequent, since the absence of dark matter halos reduces the dynamical friction between two galaxies. Also, while clumpy galaxies lead to rapid classical bulge formation in CDM, the inefficient dynamical friction with MOND in the early-universe galaxies prevents the clumps to coalesce together in the center to form spheroids. This leads to less frequent and less massive classical bulges. Bars in MOND are more frequent and stronger, and have a more constant pattern speed, which modifies significantly the pseudo-bulge morphology. The fraction of pseudo-bulges is expected to be dominant in MOND.