Related papers: The Evolution of Galaxies
We review observational evidence bearing on the formation of a prototypical large spiral galaxy, the Milky Way. New ground- and space-based studies of globular star clusters and dwarf spheroidal galaxies provide a wealth of information to…
Star clusters stand at the intersection of much of modern astrophysics: the interstellar medium, gravitational dynamics, stellar evolution, and cosmology. Here we review observations and theoretical models for the formation, evolution, and…
Over the past 10 Gyr, star-forming galaxies have changed dramatically, from clumpy and gas rich, to rather quiescent stellar-dominated disks with specific star formation rates lower by factors of a few tens. We present a general theoretical…
The merger history of a galaxy is thought to be one of the major factors determining its internal dynamics, with galaxies having undergone different types or mergers (e.g. dry, minor or major mergers) predicted to show different dynamical…
This paper addresses the questions of what we have learned about how and when dense star clusters form, and what studies of star clusters have revealed about galaxy formation and evolution. One important observation is that globular…
Secular evolution and fueling is driven by bars in spiral galaxies, and the related dynamical processes are reviewed. It is shown that gravity torques dominate over viscous torques, and produce gas infall to the center. In this infall, the…
Cold-mode gas accretion onto galaxies is a direct prediction of LCDM simulations and provides galaxies with fuel that allows them to continue to form stars over the lifetime of the Universe. Given its dramatic influence on a galaxy's gas…
Bulges are of different types, morphologies and kinematics, from pseudo-bulges, close to disk properties (Sersic index, rotation fraction, flatenning), to classical de Vaucouleurs bulges, close to elliptical galaxies. Secular evolution and…
The galaxies of the Local Group that are currently forming stars can serve as our laboratories for understanding star formation and the evolution of massive stars. In this talk I will summarize what I think we've learned about these topics…
The physical phenomena contributing to the galaxy growth can be tested all the way to z= 1. Galaxy mass, extinction, star formation and gas metal abundance can be measured in a robust way, as well as the distribution of the galaxy…
Correlations between stellar kinematics and chemical abundances are fossil evidence for evolutionary connections between Galactic structural components. Extensive stellar surveys show that the only tolerably clear distinction between…
The properties of the first galaxies are shaped in large part by the first generations of stars, which emit high energy radiation and unleash both large amounts of mechanical energy and the first heavy elements when they explode as…
Even today in our Galaxy, stars form from gas cores in a variety of environments, which may affect the properties of resulting star and planetary systems. Here we study the role of pressure, parameterized via ambient clump mass surface…
In this paper we address the issue of the origin of some observational properties of the galactic globular cluster system. After a preliminary study of some general properties of the main evolutionary processes, we investigate the evolution…
To understand galaxies and their evolution, it is necessary to describe how the different scales interact: how the microscopic physics, such as star formation, or the large scale physics, such as galaxy interactions may modify the galaxy…
Galactic spheroids can form as a result of galaxy interactions and mergers of disks. Detailed analyses of the photometric properties, the intrinsic orbital structure, the line-of-sight velocity distributions and the kinemetry of simulated…
Using cosmological hydrodynamical simulations, we investigate the effects of hierarchical aggregation on the triggering of star formation in galactic-like objects. We include a simple star formation model to transform the cold gas in dense…
We present an analytic formalism that describes the evolution of the stellar, gas, and metal content of galaxies. It is based on the idea, inspired by hydrodynamic simulations, that galaxies live in a slowly-evolving equilibrium between…
This chapter reviews the dynamical processes in young stellar clusters. The accretion of gas by individual stars affects the dynamics of the cluster, and the masses of the stars. Dynamical mass segregation cannot explain the degree of mass…
We present a multiphase model for the evolution of elliptical galaxies. Diffuse gas, molecular clouds, stars and remnants are taken into account. Cloud--cloud collisions and stimulated processes are the main causes of star formation. The…