Globular clusters and bar: captured or not captured?

Abstract

Studies of the dynamics of globular clusters assume different values of bar parameters (mass, velocity, size) and analyse the results of orbit classifications over the range of the chosen values. It is also a usual thing that a spherical bulge component is converted into the bar to obtain a non-axisymmetric potential from an axisymmetric one. The choice of bar parameters and the way the bar is converted from the bulge introduce systematics into the orbit classifications that we explore in the present study. We integrate orbits of 30 bulge globular clusters residing in the inner area of the Galaxy (R ≲ 5 kpc) backwards in time for three different potentials, two of which are obtained by fitting the rotation curve, and one is taken from the surrogate N-body model representing our Galaxy. We analyse each orbit in terms of dominant frequencies obtained from its coordinate spectra. We find that the bar pattern speed is a key factor in orbital classification. With an increase of it, frequencies deviate more and more from the “bar” frequency ratio 2:1. The bar-to-bulge mass ratio (assuming the total mass of the bar plus the bulge is fixed) and size of the bar play a smaller role. We also find that, in the N-body potential, the fraction of orbits that follow the bar is higher than in those obtained from fitting the rotation curve.