Gas structures and star formation in the central region of barred-spiral galaxies in self-consistent 3D simulations

The central regions of barred-spiral galaxies contain interesting gaseous structures such as dust lanes and nuclear rings with intense star formation. While our previous studies were useful in understanding the formation of these structures star formation history, they were limited to 2D isothermal galaxies in which the stellar disk and halo are modeled by fixed gravitational potentials. To study the effects of bar growth as well as the vertical dimension, we use the mesh-free hydrodynamic code named GIZMO and run 3D simulations by treating the stellar disk and halo as being live. We find that the new 3D models form the gaseous features similarly to the previous 2D models, although the detailed formation processes are quite different. For example, a ring has a large radius when it first forms and shrinks over time in the previous 2D models. In the 3D live-potential models, however, a ring forms small and grows in size with time. We present the results of the new simulations and discuss them in comparison with the previous 2D results.