SIMBAD references

Earlier studies have shown that massive bulges impede bar formation in disk galaxies. Recent N-body simulations have derived a bar formation criterion that depends on the radial bulge force in a galaxy disk. We use those simulations to show that bars can form only when the force constant FB<0.13, where FB depends on the ratio of the bulge force to the total force of the galaxy at twice the disk scale length 2R_d. In this article, we test this theoretical prediction using observational data obtained from the literature. Our sample consists of 63 barred galaxies with a wide range of Hubble classes taken from the S⁴G catalog; for the galaxies that we include, bulge, disk, and bar decomposition has been carried out. We find that 92% of our sample galaxies satisfy the condition FB<0.13 for bar formation in galaxies and hence agree with the bar formation criterion given by the simulations.