Related papers: How do Galaxies Accrete Gas and Form Stars?
We present a model for the formation of massive ($M > 10 M_\odot$) stars through accretion-induced collisions in the cores of embedded dense stellar clusters. This model circumvents the problem of accreting onto a star whose luminosity is…
We study the formation and evolution of dark galaxies using the IllustrisTNG cosmological hydrodynamical simulation. We first identify dark galaxies with stellar-to-total mass ratios, $M_* / M_{\text{tot}}$, smaller than $10^{-4}$, which…
We investigate the impact of recent observational advances in research on the gaseous content of the universe on our knowledge of star formation histories of disk galaxies. Several contemporary surveys indicate that large quantities of gas…
Both numerical hydrodynamic and semi-analytic cosmological models of galaxy formation struggle to match observed star formation histories of galaxies in low mass halos (M$_{\rm{H}} \lesssim 10^{11} M_\odot$), predicting more star formation…
Galaxies are expected to accrete pristine gas from their surroundings to sustain their star formation over cosmic timescales. Its lower abundance affects the metallicity of the ISM in which stars are born, leaving chemical imprints in the…
Using a set of zoomed-in cosmological simulations of high-redshift progenitors of massive galaxies, we isolate and trace the history of gas that is accreted by central supermassive black holes. We determine the origins of the accreted gas,…
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…
It is an obvious statement that all the galaxies we see today in and around our Local Group have been forming and evolving for a significant fraction of the age of the Universe. It is not a great leap of logic to further state that the…
In a Lambda CDM Universe, galaxies grow in mass both through star formation and through addition of already-formed stars in galaxy mergers. Because of this partial decoupling of these two modes of galaxy growth, I discuss each separately in…
Super-massive black holes, with masses larger than a million times that of the Sun, appear to inhabit the centers of all massive galaxies. Cosmologically-motivated theories of galaxy formation need feedback from these super-massive black…
Using integral field spectroscopic data from the Mapping Nearby Galaxies at Apache Point Observatory survey, we investigate the spatially resolved properties and empirical relations of a star-forming galaxy and a non-star-forming galaxy…
Galaxy mergers trigger both star formation and accretion onto the central supermassive black hole. As a result of subsequent energetic feedback processes, it has long been proposed that star formation may be promptly extinguished in galaxy…
Star formation lies at the center of a web of processes that drive cosmic evolution: generation of radiant energy, synthesis of elements, formation of planets, and development of life. Decades of observations have yielded a variety of…
The processes regulating star formation in galaxies are thought to act across a hierarchy of spatial scales. To connect extragalactic star formation relations from global and kpc-scale measurements to recent cloud-scale resolution studies,…
Using cosmological hydrodynamical simulations, we investigate the effects of hierarchical aggregation on the triggering of star formation in galactic-like objects. We include a simple star formation model to transform the cold gas in dense…
The cosmic accretion of both dark matter and baryons into halos typically is measured using some evolving virial relation, but recent work suggests that most halo growth at late cosmic time (z < 2) is not physical but is rather the…
We examine how the atomic and molecular gas components of galaxies evolve to higher redshifts using the semi-analytic galaxy formation models of Fu et al. (2010) in which we track the surface density profiles of gas in disks. We adopt two…
In our modern understanding of galaxy formation, every galaxy forms within a dark matter halo. The formation and growth of galaxies over time is connected to the growth of the halos in which they form. The advent of large galaxy surveys as…
Stars and planets are the fundamental objects of the Universe. Their formation processes, though related, may differ in important ways. Stars almost certainly form from gravitational collapse and probably have formed this way since the…
I review recent progress in understanding the formation of the first stars and quasars. The initial conditions for their emergence are given by the now firmly established model of cosmological structure formation. Numerical simulations of…