Spiral Galaxies with Thick Box/Peanut Bulges

Abstract

The close connection between bars and box/peanut-shaped bulges is observationally and theoretically supported. However, for the class of thick box/peanut-shaped bulges an environmental hypothesis instead of an internal mechanism is suggested to account for the prominence of the box/peanut component. The main goal of this thesis is to present a multi-wavelength study of the kinematics and the morphology in a sample of thick box/peanut-shaped bulges in order to find out relics of interactions. A new technique to derive the rotation curve from the HI observation will be presented. All these new results suggest a scenario in which interactions play a significant role in the history of thick box/peanut-shaped bulge galaxies and they have likely experienced a mass infall.