The imprint of arms and bars on rotation curves: in-plane and off-plane

ABSTRACT Within rotation curves (RCs) is encoded the kinematical state of the stellar disc as well as information about the dynamical mechanisms driving the secular evolution of galaxies. To explain the characteristic features of RCs which arise by the influence of spiral patterns and bar, we study the kinematics of the stellar disc in a set of spiral galaxy models specifically tailored for this purpose. We find that, for our models, the induced non-circular motions are more prominent for spirals with larger pitch angle, the ones typical in late-type galaxies. Moreover, inside corotation, stars rotate slower along the spiral arms than along the interarm, which translates into a local minima or maxima in the RC, respectively. We also see, from off-plane RC, that the rotation is faster for stars that at observed closer to the plane, and diminishes as one looks farther off plane; this trend is more noticeable in our Sa galaxy model than our Sc galaxy model. Additionally, in a previous work we found that the diagonal ridges in the Vϕ–R plane, revealed through the GaiaDR2, have a resonant origin due to the spiral arms and bar and that these ridges project themselves as wiggles in the RC; here, we further notice that the development of these ridges, and the development of high orbital eccentricities in the stellar disc are the same. Hence, we conclude that, the following explanations of bumps and wiggles in RCs are equivalent: they are manifestations of diagonal ridges in the Vϕ–R plane, or of the rearrangement of the orbital eccentricities in the stellar disc.