Vertical surface brightness profiles of boxy bulges

The thickening of the bar in barred disk galaxies has a strong influence in shaping the morphology in the inner regions of a disk galaxy above the galactic plane. The result of such a secular evolutionary process can be observed in galaxies with box/peanut shaped (b/ps) bulges. We have applied a one-dimensional fitting method to our sample of 30 edge-on disk galaxies using different fitting function approaches. A clear increase in scale height can be observed in the area of the most prominent b/ps isophotes compared to the neighbouring disk and bulge areas, in agreement with the predictions of the bar thickening model.