Related papers: Origin and structure of the Galactic disc(s)
Our Milky Way Galaxy is a typical large spiral galaxy, representative of the most common morphological type in the local Universe. We can determine the properties of individual stars in unusual detail, and use the characteristics of the…
We study the build-up and survival of angular momentum in the stellar disc using a statistical suite of cosmological simulations of Milky Way-mass galaxies. Our results show that stellar kinematics at $z=0$ rarely recover the true times of…
One of the suggested thick disc formation mechanisms is that they were born quickly and in situ from a turbulent clumpy disc. Subsequently, thin discs formed slowly within them from leftovers of the turbulent phase and from material…
Recent integral-field spectroscopy observations have revealed that thick- and thin-disk star-formation histories are regulated by the interplay of internal and external processes. We analyze stellar-population properties of 24 spiral…
We investigate the evolution of the abundance of fluorine in the Milky Way thick and thin discs by means of detailed chemical evolution models compared with recent observational data. The chemical evolution models adopted here have already…
We aim to understand the accretion history of the Milky Way by exploring the vertical and radial properties of the Galactic thick disc. We study the chemical and kinematic properties of roughly a thousand spectra of faint magnitude…
The Milky Way is expected to host an accreted disc of stars and dark matter. This forms as massive >1:10 mergers are preferentially dragged towards the disc plane by dynamical friction and then tidally shredded. The accreted disc likely…
Thick discs are nearly ubiquitous components of the discs of present-day galaxies. It has been proposed that a fraction of their stars has been accreted. Here, we aim to find whether accretion of satellites is the main thick disc formation…
The formation and structure of the Milky Way has a fundamental role in our understanding of the universe and its evolution, and thanks to the Gaia mission and large spectroscopic surveys, we live an exceptional moment of data availability,…
This paper reports simulations allowing for stochastic accretion and mass loss within closed and open systems modeled using a previously developed multi-population, multi-zone (halo, thick disk, thin disk) treatment. The star formation rate…
We explore the implications for the high redshift universe of ``state-of-the-art'' models for the chemical and spectrophotometric evolution of spiral galaxies. The models are based on simple ``scaling relations'' for discs, obtained in the…
In this series of lectures I discuss the basic principles and the modelling of the chemical evolution of galaxies. In particular, I present models for the chemical evolution of the Milky Way galaxy and compare them with the available…
In this review, I discuss just three aspects of the stability and evolution of galactic discs. (1) I first review our understanding of the bar instability and how it can be controlled. Disc galaxies in which the orbital speed does not…
We performed numerical simulations of mergers between gas-rich disc galaxies, which result in the formation of late-type galaxies. Stars formed during the merger end up in a thick disc that is partially supported by velocity dispersion and…
We develop a hybrid model of galactic chemical evolution that combines a multi-ring computation of chemical enrichment with a prescription for stellar migration and the vertical distribution of stellar populations informed by a cosmological…
We present the results of several detailed numerical N-body simulations of the dynamical interactions of two equal mass disc galaxies. Both galaxies are embedded in spherical halos of dark matter and contain central bulges. Our analysis of…
We present the analysis of a suite of simulations run with different particle-and grid-based cosmological hydrodynamical codes and compare them with observational data of the Milky Way. This is the first study to make comparisons of…
We present results for the chemical evolution of the Galactic bulge in the context of an inside-out formation model of the Galaxy. A supernova-driven wind was also included in analogy with elliptical galaxies. New observations of chemical…
We use a series of idealized, numerical SPH simulations to study the formation and evolution of galactic, gas-rich disks forming from gas infall within dark matter halos. The temperature and density structure of the gas is varied in order…
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…