Related papers: The Challenge of Modelling Galactic Disks
The Galactic disk retains a vast amount of information about how it came to be, and how it evolved over cosmic time. However, we know very little about the secular processes associated with disk evolution. One major uncertainty is the…
Galaxy formation is at the heart of our understanding of cosmic evolution. Although there is a consensus that galaxies emerged from the expanding matter background by gravitational instability of primordial fluctuations, a number of…
The timescale over which planets may form in the circumstellar disks of young stars is one of the main issues of current planetary formation models. We present here new constraints on planet formation timescales derived from the rotational…
Advances in extragalactic astronomy have prompted the development of increasingly realistic models which aim to describe the formation and evolution of galaxies. We review the philosophy behind one such technique, called semi-analytic…
We have performed a high mass and force resolution simulation of an idealized galaxy forming from dissipational collapse of gas embedded in a spherical dark matter halo. The simulation includes star formation and effects of stellar…
Simulations of dense stellar systems currently face two major hurdles, one astrophysical and one computational. The astrophysical problem lies in the fact that several major stages in binary evolution, such as common envelope evolution, are…
Despite the increase in observational data on exoplanets, the processes that lead to the formation of planets are still not well understood. But thanks to the high number of known exoplanets, it is now possible to look at them as a…
Precession is a very common phenomenon for small-scale astronomical objects. However, the precession of galactic disks, occurring on a scale larger than kilo-parsec, has barely been studied in the literature. Quantifying this precession in…
The clustered nature of star formation should produce a high degree of structure in the combined phase and chemical space in the Galactic disk. To date, observed structure of this kind has been mostly limited to bound clusters and moving…
We report idealized simulations that mimic the growth of galaxy disks embedded in responsive halos and bulges. The disks manifested an almost overwhelming tendency to form strong bars that we found very difficult to prevent. We found that…
Stellar evolution models are a cornerstone of young star astrophysics, which necessitates that they yield accurate and reliable predictions of stellar properties. Here, I review the current performance of stellar evolution models against…
We present a dynamical model for the formation and evolution of a massive disk galaxy, within a growing dark halo whose mass evolves according to cosmological simulations of structure formation. The galactic evolution is simulated with a…
I review the current state of our understanding of the galaxy formation and evolution process from the modeler's perspective. With the advent of the cold dark matter model and the support of fast computers and advanced simulation…
Large volume cosmological simulations succeed in reproducing the large-scale structure of the Universe. However, they lack resolution and may not take into account all relevant physical processes to test if the detail properties of galaxies…
I review the results of recent cosmological simulations of galaxy formation that highlight the importance of satellite accretion in the formation of galactic disks. Tidal debris of disrupted satellites may contribute to the disk component…
The time evolution of initially balanced, rapidly rotating models for an isolated disk of highly flattened galaxies of stars is calculated. The method of direct integration of the Newtonian equations of motion of stars over a time span of…
Ever since a thick disk was proposed to explain the vertical distribution of the Milky Way disk stars, its origin has been a recurrent question. We aim to answer this question by inspecting 19 disk galaxies with stellar mass greater than…
After a recall of fundamental concepts used in galactic dynamics, we review observational facts as well as results of orbit theory and numerical simulations which suggest long-term evolution of galaxies. Dynamical interactions between…
Disks of gas accreting onto supermassive black holes may host numerous stellar-mass objects, formed within the disk or captured from a nuclear star cluster. We present a simplified model of stellar evolution applicable to these dense…
We present new models for the formation of disk galaxies that improve upon previous models by following the detailed accretion and cooling of the baryonic mass, and by using realistic distributions of specific angular momentum. Under the…