Kartik Sheth

Title: The Starring Role of Bars in Understanding Galaxy Evolution: Results from S4G, COSMOS, DEEP2 and AEGIS

Abstract: I will begin by first giving a brief overview of ALMA, which is set
to start science observations later this year.
Bars are a key signpost in the evolutionary history of a disk galaxy.
When a disk is sufficiently massive, dynamically cold and rotationally
supported and sufficient time has elapsed for the baryonic matter to
exchange energy and angular momentum with the dark matter halo or the
outer disk, a bar is inevitable.  Therefore understanding the
evolution of the bar fraction as a function of the host galaxy
properties and as a function of redshift can provide clues to the
evolutionary history of galaxies.  I will present the latest results
on local bars from the on-going Spitzer Survey of Stellar Structure in
Galaxies (S4G) and discuss the observations for the declining bar
fraction with redshift from the COSMOS survey.  One reason for the
decline in the bar fraction is that galaxy disks were too dynamically
hot to host bars at higher redshift - I present an investigation of
this hypothesis using the DEEP2/AEGIS surve