Related papers: Galactic Bars in Cosmological Context
We present a study of the environment of barred galaxies using galaxies drawn from the SDSS. We use several different statistics to quantify the environment: the projected two-point cross-correlation function, the background-subtracted…
Recently, both simulations and observations have revealed that flybys - fast, one-time interactions between two galaxy halos - are surprisingly common, nearing/comparable to galaxy mergers. Since these are rapid, transient events with the…
We review the observational evidences and the possible theoretical explanations for the abundance gradients in the Galactic disk. In particular, we discuss the implications of abundance gradients and gradients of abundance ratios on the…
The $\Lambda$CDM scenario to form galaxies encounters many problems when confronted with observations, namely the prediction of dark matter cusps in all galaxies, and in particular in dwarf irregulars, dominated by dark matter, or the low…
A short overview is presented of several topics concerning the evolution of the Milky Way (MW) in a cosmological context. In particular, the metallicity distribution of the MW halo is derived analytically and the halo metallicity and…
Stellar bars are important internal drivers of secular evolution in disk galaxies. Using a sample of nearby spiral galaxies with weak and strong bars, we explore the relationships between the star formation feature and stellar bars in…
We present a summary of recent assessments of the mass distribution in disk galaxies. Of issue in order to characterize galaxy formation models is to determine the relative fraction of baryons and dark matter at all radii in galaxies. For…
The physical mechanisms responsible for bar formation and destruction in galaxies remain a subject of debate. While we have gained valuable insight into how bars form and evolve from isolated idealized simulations, in the cosmological…
I review the various mechanisms for creating bars in rotating stellar disks, and conclude that the swing-amplified feed-back loop, which produces rapidly tumbling bars, remains the most probable. The bar continues to evolve after its…
K_s-band images of 20 barred galaxies show an increase in the peak amplitude of the normalized m=2 Fourier component with the R_25-normalized radius at this peak. This implies that longer bars have higher $m=2$ amplitudes. The long bars…
Bars play a major role in driving the evolution of disk galaxies and in shaping their present properties. They cause angular momentum to be redistributed within the galaxy, emitted mainly from (near-)resonant material at the inner Lindblad…
We review the observational evidences concerning the three-dimensional structure of the Galactic bulge. Although the inner few kpc of our Galaxy are normally referred to as {\it the bulge}, all the observations demonstrate that this region…
Asymmetries in galactic potentials, either self-induced, or caused by a passing companion, play an important role in global gas dynamics in galaxies. In particular, they are able to trigger gas inflow, which in turn feeds nuclear activity.…
We investigate possible environmental and morphological trends in the $z\sim0$ bar fraction using two carefully selected samples representative of a low-density environment (the isolated galaxies from the AMIGA sample) and of a dense…
We investigate the gravitational interactions between live stellar disks and their dark matter halos, using LCDM haloes similar in mass to that of the Milky Way taken from the Aquarius Project. We introduce the stellar disks by first…
The Galactic bulge is now considered to be the inner three-dimensional part of the Milky Way's bar. It has a peanut shape and is characterized by cylindrical rotation. In N-body simulations, box/peanut bulges arise from disks through bar…
The formation and evolution of galactic disks are complex phenomena, where gas and star dynamics are coupled through star formation and the related feedback. The physical processes are so numerous and intricate that numerical models focus,…
Secular evolution gradually shapes galaxies by internal processes, in contrast to early cosmological evolution which is more rapid. An important driver of secular evolution is the flow of gas from the disk into the central regions, often…
The Galactic center stellar disk and the circumnuclear ring provide a unique opportunity to study in detail the dynamics and physical conditions of distant molecular disks in the nuclei of galaxies. One of the key questions is how these…
The central regions of disk galaxies are hosts to supermassive black holes whose masses show a tight correlation with the properties of surrounding stellar bulges. While the exact origin of this dependency is not clear, it can be related to…