Related papers: Galaxy growth in the concordance $\Lambda$CDM cosm…
In cold dark matter cosmologies, the most massive dark matter halos are predicted to undergo rapid growth at z<1. While there is the expectation that massive galaxies will also rapidly grow via merging, recent observational studies conclude…
We use the Illustris simulation to study the relative contributions of in situ star formation and stellar accretion to the build-up of galaxies over an unprecedentedly wide range of masses ($M_{\ast} = 10^9-10^{12} \, {\rm M_{\odot}}$),…
We have constructed the merging history of dark matter halos in a SCDM cosmology, by means of a the {``Merging Cell Model''} (Rodrigues & Thomas 1996). It is based on the linear theory of growth of density fluctuations, and the Top-Hat…
Recent studies emphasize that an empirical relation between the stellar mass of galaxies and the mass of their host dark matter subhaloes can predict the clustering of galaxies and its evolution with cosmic time. In this paper we study the…
[Abridged] Over the past two decades observations and theoretical simulations have established a global frame-work of galaxy formation and evolution in the young Universe. Galaxies formed as baryonic gas cooled at the centres of collapsing…
Based on the star formation histories (SFH) of galaxies in halos of different masses, we develop an empirical model to grow galaxies in dark mattet halos. This model has very few ingredients, any of which can be associated to observational…
We measure the merger fraction of massive galaxies using the UltraVISTA/COSMOS $Ks$-band selected catalog, complemented with the deeper, higher resolution 3DHST+CANDELS catalog selected in the HST/WFC3 $H$-band, presenting the largest…
We provide a new observational test for a key prediction of the \Lambda CDM cosmological model: the contributions of mergers with different halo-to-main-cluster mass ratios to cluster-sized halo growth. We perform this test by dynamically…
A large deep and nearly complete B<24.5 redshift sample is used to measure the change in distribution function of the stellar mass production rate in individual galaxies with redshift. The evolution of the star formation rate distribution…
Using the data set of The Three Hundred project, i.e. a suite of 324 hydrodynamical resimulations of cluster-sized haloes, we study galaxy cluster mergers and their effect on colour and luminosity changes of their brightest cluster galaxies…
We use a series of high-resolution simulations of a `Milky-Way' halo coupled to semi-analytic methods to study the formation of our own Galaxy and of its stellar halo. The physical properties of our model Milky Way, as well as the age and…
The evolution of our Universe is strongly influenced by the attractive force of gravity. A key aspect of this evolution, therefore, is the merging of galaxies. Here, we explore the role of mergers in shaping the properties of massive…
[abridged] This work aims to observationally investigate the history of size growth of early-type galaxies and how the growth depends on cosmic epoch and the mass of the halo in which they are embedded. We carried out a photometric and…
We introduce and apply a new approach to probe the response of galactic stellar haloes to the interplay between cosmological merger histories and galaxy formation physics. We perform dark matter-only, zoomed simulations of two Milky…
Recent work suggests that galaxy evolution, and the build-up of stellar mass (M*) over cosmic time, is characterized by changes with redshift of star formation rate (SFR) and oxygen abundance (O/H). In a companion paper, we have compiled a…
Standard LCDM predicts that the major merger rate of galaxy-size dark matter halos rises rapidly with redshift. The average number of close companions per galaxy, Nc, is often used to infer the galaxy merger rate, however, recent…
We compare observations of the high redshift galaxy population to the predictions of the galaxy formation model of Croton et al. (2006) and De Lucia & Blaizot (2006). This model, implemented on the Millennium Simulation of the concordance…
Using observations in the COSMOS field, we report an intriguing correlation between the star formation activity of massive (~10^{11.4}\msol) central galaxies, their stellar masses, and the large-scale (~10 Mpc) environments of their…
To understand the formation and evolution of galaxies at redshifts z < 10, one must invariably introduce specific models (e.g., for the star formation) in order to fully interpret the data. Unfortunately, this tends to render the analysis…
Understanding the connections between galaxy stellar mass, star formation rate, and dark matter halo mass represents a key goal of the theory of galaxy formation. Cosmological simulations that include hydrodynamics, physical treatments of…