Centers of Barred Galaxies: Secondary Bars and Gas Flows

Abstract

Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) require mass accretion onto the central engine. On large galactic scales, torques from a stellar bar can efficiently remove angular momentum from gas, and cause it to move inwards along two hydrodynamical shocks on the leading edges of the bar. Inflowing gas settles on near-circular orbits around the Inner Lindblad Resonance (ILR), and forms a nuclear ring, about 1 kpc in size. A secondary bar inside the main one, with its own pair of shocks, has been proposed to drive further inflow, and thus feed the AGN in a manner similar to the inflow on large scales. Here, we report results of high resolution hydrodynamical simulations, where we examine the nature of the nuclear ring, and check how efficient double bars can be in fueling AGNs.