Related papers: Dry Mergers: A Crucial Test for Galaxy Formation
Galaxy mergers are known to trigger bursts of central star formation, which should therefore lead to stellar mass growth in their inner regions. However, observational measurements of this `burst mass fraction' are scant. Here, we assemble…
The stellar initial mass function (IMF) of early-type galaxies is the combination of the IMF of the stellar population formed in-situ and that of accreted stellar populations. Using as an observable the effective IMF $\alpha_{IMF}$, defined…
We use N-body simulations and observationally-normalized relations between dark matter halo mass, stellar mass, and cold gas mass to derive robust, arguably inevitable expectations about the baryonic content of major mergers out to redshift…
The growth of galaxies is a key problem in understanding the structure and evolution of the universe. Galaxies grow their stellar mass by a combination of star formation and mergers, with a relative importance that is redshift dependent.…
We aim at addressing the questions related to galaxy mass assembly through major and minor wet merging processes in the redshift range 1<z<2. A consequent fraction of Milky Way like galaxies are thought to have undergone an unstable clumpy…
With the aid of a simple yet robust approach we investigate the influence of dissipationless and dissipative merging on galaxy structure, and the consequent effects on the scaling laws followed by elliptical galaxies. Our results suggest…
We study galaxy pair samples selected from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-DR7) and we perform an analysis of minor and major mergers with the aim of investigating the dependence of galaxy properties on interactions. We build a galaxy…
Galaxy mergers are believed to trigger strong starbursts. This is well assessed by observations in the local Universe. However the efficiency of this mechanism has poorly been tested so far for high redshift, actively star forming,…
Using the redMaPPer cluster catalogue based on the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) photometry, we investigate the importance of major mergers in the stellar mass build-up of brightest cluster galaxies (BCGs) between $0.08 \leq z \leq 0.50$.…
I review the major surveys of high redshift galaxies observed using integral field spectroscopy techniques in the visible and in the infrared. The comparison of various samples has to be done with care since they have different properties…
Galaxy mergers are thought to be one of the main mechanisms of the mass assembly of galaxies. Recently, many works have suggested a possible increase in the fraction of major mergers in the early Universe, reviving the debate on which…
We investigate the total major (> 1:4 by stellar mass) and minor (> 1:100 by stellar mass) merger history of a population of 80 massive (M_* > 10^11 M_sol) galaxies at high redshifts (z = 1.7 - 3). We utilize extremely deep and high…
This article concerns the formation and structure of dark matter halos, including (1) their radial density profiles, (2) their abundance, and (3) their merger rates. The last topic may be relevant to the nature of the small, bright,…
We investigate the development of the colour-magnitude re- lation (CMR) of cluster galaxies. This study is carried out using a semi- analytic model of galaxy formation and evolution coupled to a sample of simulated galaxy clusters of…
A key unresolved question is the role that galaxy mergers play in driving stellar mass growth over cosmic time. Recent observational work hints at the possibility that the overall contribution of `major' mergers (mass ratios $\gtrsim$1:4)…
We incorporate a simple scheme for the growth of supermassive black holes into semi-analytic models that follow the formation and evolution of galaxies in a cold dark matter dominated Universe. We assume that supermassive black holes are…
We use the first systematic data sets of CO molecular line emission in z~1-3 normal star forming galaxies for a comparison of the dependence of galaxy-averaged star formation rates on molecular gas masses at low and high redshifts, and in…
Using semi-analytic models of galaxy formation set within the Cold Dark Matter (CDM) merging hierarchy, we investigate several scenarios for the nature of the high-redshift ($z \ga 2$) Lyman-break galaxies (LBGs). We consider a…
Hierarchical structure formation theory is based on the notion that mergers drive galaxy evolution, so a considerable framework of semi-analytic models and N-body simulations has been constructed to calculate how mergers transform a growing…
Like massive galaxies, dwarf galaxies are expected to undergo major mergers with other dwarfs. However, the end state of these mergers and the role that merging plays in regulating dwarf star formation is uncertain. Using imaging from the…