Related papers: Thin, thick and dark discs in LCDM
The Milky Way serves as a template for understanding the formation and evolution of late-type massive disk galaxies since we can obtain detailed chemical and kinematic information for large samples of individual stars. However, the early…
The prevailing model of galaxy formation proposes that galaxies like the Milky Way are built through a series of mergers with smaller galaxies over time. However, the exact details of the Milky Way's assembly history remain uncertain. In…
I discuss how the chemical abundance distributions, kinematics and age distributions of stars in the thin and thick disks of the Galaxy can be used to decipher the merger history of the Milky Way, a typical large galaxy. The observational…
The Milky Way galaxy is surrounded by a circumgalactic medium (CGM) that may play a key role in galaxy evolution as the source of gas for star formation and a repository of metals and energy produced by star formation and nuclear activity.…
Fuzzy dark matter (FDM), an attractive dark matter candidate comprising ultralight bosons (axions) with a particle mass $m_a\sim10^{-22}$ eV, is motivated by the small-scale challenges of cold dark matter and features a kpc-size de Broglie…
The kinematic dispersions of disc stars can be used to measure the dynamic contributions of baryons to the rotation curves of spiral galaxies and hence to trace the amount and distribution of the remaining dark matter. However, the simple…
We use high-resolution ($\simeq$ 35pc) hydrodynamical simulations of galaxy formation to investigate the relation between gas accretion and star formation in galaxies hosted by dark matter haloes of mass $10^{12}$ $\mathrm{M_\odot}$ at $z =…
We study the formation of galaxies in a Lambda-CDM Universe using high resolution hydrodynamical simulations with a multiphase treatment of gas, cooling and feedback, focusing on the formation of discs. Our simulations follow eight haloes…
Circumstellar disks are an essential ingredient of the formation of low-mass stars. It is unclear, however, whether the accretion-disk paradigm can also account for the formation of stars more massive than about 10 solar masses, in which…
We present a new chemical evolution model for the Galaxy that assumes three main infall episodes of primordial gas for the formation of halo, thick and thin disk, respectively. We compare our results with selected data taking into account…
I briefly review the growing evidence that thick stellar disks surround most edge-on disk galaxies. Recent studies show that these extragalactic thick disks have old ages, low metallicities, long scale lengths, and moderately flattened…
Context: The Milky Way contains a thick and a thin disc that differ in chemical, kinematic, structural, and spatial properties. There is significant overlap in the distributions of these properties, especially so at higher metallicities.…
We study the chemical evolution of the thick and thin discs of the Galaxy by comparing detailed chemical evolution models with recent data from the AMBRE Project. The data suggest that the stars in the thick and thin discs form two distinct…
Previous studies based on the analysis of Gaia DR2 data have revealed that accreted stars, possibly originating from a single progenitor satellite, are a significant component of the halo of our Galaxy, potentially constituting most of the…
We explore the properties of Milky Way subhalos in self-interacting dark matter models for moderate cross sections of 1 to 5 cm$^2$g$^{-1}$ using high-resolution zoom-in N-body simulations. We include the gravitational potential of a…
We present results from \textsc{GigaEris}, a cosmological, $N$-body hydrodynamical "zoom-in" simulation of the formation of a Milky Way-sized galaxy halo with unprecedented resolution, encompassing of order a billion particles within the…
A crucial question in galaxy formation is what role new accretion has in star formation. Theoretical models have predicted a wide range of correlation strengths between halo accretion and galaxy star formation. Previously, we presented a…
Deep photometric surveys of the Milky Way have revealed diffuse structures encircling our Galaxy far beyond the "classical" limits of the stellar disk. This paper reviews results from our own and other observational programs, which together…
Despite the recent advancements in the field of galaxy formation and evolution, fully self-consistent simulations are still unable to make the detailed predictions necessary for the planned and ongoing large spectroscopic and photometry…
A wealth of recent observational studies shows the dark matter in the Milky Way to have the following fundamental properties: 1) there is no detectable dark matter associated with the Galactic disk -- the dark matter is distributed in a…