The Carnegie-Irvine Galaxy Survey. IX. Classification of Bulge Types and Statistical Properties of Pseudo Bulges

Abstract

Abstract We study the statistical properties of 320 bulges of disk galaxies in the Carnegie-Irvine Galaxy Survey, using robust structural parameters of galaxies derived from image fitting. We apply the Kormendy relation to classify classical and pseudo bulges and characterize the bulge dichotomy with respect to the structural properties of the bulges and the physical properties of the host galaxies. We confirm previous findings that pseudo bulges on average have smaller Sérsic indices, lower bulge-to-total ratios, and fainter surface brightnesses than classical bulges. Our sizable sample statistically shows that pseudo bulges are more intrinsically flattened than classical bulges. Pseudo bulges are most frequent (incidence ≳80%) in late-type spirals (later than Sc). Our measurements support the picture in which pseudo bulges arose from star formation induced by inflowing gas, while classical bulges were born out of violent processes such as mergers and coalescence of clumps. We reveal differences with the literature that warrant attention: (1) the bimodal distribution of Sérsic indices presented by previous studies is not reproduced in our study; (2) classical and pseudo bulges have similar relative bulge sizes; and (3) the pseudo bulge fraction is considerably smaller in early-type disks than reported in previous studies based on one-dimensional surface brightness profile fitting. We attribute these differences to our improved image quality, more robust bulge-to-disk decomposition technique, and to the different classification criteria that we applied. Moreover, we find that barred galaxies do not host more pseudo bulges or more prominent pseudo bulges than unbarred galaxies. Various implications of these findings are discussed.