Related papers: The Evolution of Galaxies
In this review, I provide an overview of theoretical aspects related to the evolution of galaxies as a function of environment. I discuss the main physical processes at play, their characteristic time-scales and environmental dependency,…
Stellar Populations are the fossil record of Galactic evolution. Interpretation of this record in the Local Group allows one to determine reliably the dominant physics controlling the evolution of those galaxies which are typical of the…
Galactic outflows play a major role in the evolution of galaxies and the intergalactic medium (IGM). The energy deposited into the interstellar medium by supernovae and active galactic nuclei can accelerate the gas past the escape velocity,…
Galaxies represent the visible fabric of the Universe and there has been considerable progress recently in both observational and theoretical studies. The underlying goal is to understand the present-day diversity of galaxy forms, masses…
It is currently believed that galaxies were assembled via chaotic hierarchical mergers between massive cold dark matter halos, in which baryonic star forming matter was embedded. One would therefore expect the properties of individual…
Since stellar populations enhance particular element abundances according to the yields and lifetimes of the stellar progenitors, the chemical evolution of galaxies serves as one of the key tools that allows the tracing of galaxy evolution.…
Internal dynamical evolution can drive stellar systems into states of high central density. For many star clusters and galactic nuclei, the time scale on which this occurs is significantly less than the age of the universe. As a result,…
We discuss the main ingredients necessary to build models of chemical evolution of spiral galaxies and in particular the Milky Way galaxy. These ingredients include: the star formation rate, the initial mass function, the stellar yields and…
Theory predicts that cosmological gas accretion plays a fundamental role fuelling star formation in galaxies. However, a detailed description of the accretion process to be used when interpreting observations is still lacking. Using the…
Galaxy morphology is a product of how galaxies formed, how they interacted with their environment, how they were influenced by internal perturbations, AGN, and dark matter, and of their varied star formation histories. This article reviews…
The formation and evolution of galaxies is one of the great outstanding problems of astrophysics. Within the broad context of hierachical structure formation, we have only a crude picture of how galaxies like our own came into existence. A…
The conditions that lead to self-regulated star formation, star bursts and the formation of massive stellar clusters are discussed. Massive stars have a strong impact on their environment, especially on the evolution of dwarf galaxies which…
Starbursts are extreme concentrations of star-forming activity with mass conversion surface densities reaching over 1000 times higher than normal for disk galaxies. They are responsible for a large fraction of all cosmic star formation.…
The similarity between the mass and spatial distributions of pre-stellar gas cores in star-forming clouds and young stars in clusters provides strong circumstantial evidence that these gas cores are the direct progenitors of individual…
In the present universe, the gas is a minor component of giant galaxies, and its dominant phase is atomic (HI). During galaxy evolution in cosmic times, models predict that gas fractions were much higher in galaxies, and gas phases could be…
(Abridged) The building blocks of galaxies are star clusters. These form with low-star formation efficiencies and, consequently, loose a large part of their stars that expand outwards once the residual gas is expelled by the action of the…
As we strive to understand how galaxies evolve it is crucial that we resolve physical processes and test emerging theories in nearby systems that we can observe in great detail. Our own Galaxy, the Milky Way, and the nearby Magellanic…
Properties of normal galactic star formation, including the density dependence, threshold density, turbulent scaling relations, and clustering properties, are applied to the formation of galactic bulges. One important difference is that the…
We perform $N$-body simulations of star clusters in time-dependant galactic potentials. Since the Milky Way was built-up through mergers with dwarf galaxies, its globular cluster population is made up of clusters formed both during the…
How stars are born from clouds of gas is a rich physics problem whose solution will inform our understanding of not just stars but also planets, galaxies, and the universe itself. Star formation is stupendously inefficient. Take the Milky…