On the Effects of Including Counterrotating Angular Momentum in Simulations of Galactic Disk Systems

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Abstract
We describe the evolution of two-dimensional disk systems constructed with significant portions of their angular momentum counterrotating. We confirm that counterrotating angular momentum stabilizes an otherwise bar unstable disk. Further, we show that is possible to realize novel bar/disk and bar/bar configurations by varying our initial conditions. We find that it is possible to construct models that evolve to the following configurations: two counterrotating bars, a cospatial bar and bulgelike component, and a slow counterrotating bar. We examine the possible implications of such systems and whether they might exist in nature.