Do stellar bars enhance or suppress star formation?

Determine whether stellar bars in disc galaxies enhance or suppress star-formation activity.

Background

Stellar bars are widespread in nearby disc galaxies and are thought to be key agents of secular evolution through their ability to redistribute gas, stars, and angular momentum. Despite this, prior observational and theoretical studies have reported conflicting evidence on whether bars boost central star formation by funnelling gas inward or instead suppress star formation by stabilizing or depleting gas along the bar.

This paper tackles the question by performing multi-wavelength, spatially resolved SED fitting in six local barred galaxies to map stellar mass and star-formation rate surface densities and relate them via the resolved main-sequence relation. The authors find signatures consistent with bar-driven quenching, but the broader question of whether bars generically enhance or suppress star formation remains explicitly unresolved.