English

Star Formation and Accretion in Nearby Galaxies

Astrophysics of Galaxies 2026-06-26 v1

Abstract

The appearance of galaxies is strongly dominated by two physical phenomena: star formation and accretion of material onto compact objects, primarily supermassive black holes. Nearby galaxies offer a unique window to study these processes in detail and with high spatial resolution. The μ\muJy sensitivity, sub-arcsecond angular resolution and broadband coverage provided by SKA AA4 configuration will enable us to separate morphologically and spectrally the contribution from SMBH accretion and star formation processes, from the most compact nuclear region out to the most diffuse, galaxy-wide components. Disentangling thermal and non-thermal emission using multi-scale spectral index maps (traced by SKA-Mid) and absorption processes (traced mainly by SKA-Low) will allow us to account for the present and past star-formation rate, the AGN activity and the ISM properties. SKA observations of a wide range of galaxy types in the nearby Universe, including quiescent, AGN-dominated and starburst galaxies, will provide a broad view of how star formation and accretion regulate galaxy evolution, while time-domain and spectral-variability information further isolate compact accretion and transient phenomena.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2606.28191,
  title  = {Star Formation and Accretion in Nearby Galaxies},
  author = {J. Moldon and A. Alberdi and M. Perez-Torres and G. Lucatelli and R. Beswick and M. Sargent and E. Brinks and R. D. Baldi and S. Dey and F. S. Tabatabaei and K. Rubinur and N. Seymour and M. Pandey-Pommier and C. Bot},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2606.28191},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

Published in Advancing Astrophysics with the SKA II (AASKAII), 2026 (arXiv:2606.20366). Report-no:AASKAII/Moldon01. 17 pages, 2 figures