Chaos or Order in Double Barred Galaxies?

Abstract

Bars in galaxies are mainly supported by particles trapped around closed periodic orbits. These orbits respond to the bar's forcing frequency only and lack free oscillations. We show that a similar situation takes place in double bars: particles get trapped around orbits which only respond to the forcing from the two bars and lack free oscillations. We find that writing the successive positions of a particle on such an orbit every time the bars align generates a closed curve, which we call a loop. Loops allow us to verify consistency of the potential. As maps of doubly periodic orbits, loops can be used to search the phase-space in double bars in order to determine the fraction occupied by ordered motions.