Related papers: Galactic Disk Formation and the Angular Momentum P…
The observations and evolution of clumpy, high-redshift galaxies are reviewed. Models suggest that the clumps form by gravitational instabilities in a gas-rich disk, interact with each other gravitationally, and then merge in the center…
Our Galaxy is a complex machine in which several processes operate simultaneously: metal-poor gas is accreted, is chemically enriched by dying stars, and then drifts inwards, surrendering its angular momentum to stars; new stars are formed…
How elliptical galaxy dynamics relate to galaxy structure, stellar populations, spiral galaxies and environment are reviewed. The evidence assembled shows that most, if not all, galaxies originally classified as gE contain disks within…
We investigate a model of disk galaxies whereby viscous evolution of the gaseous disk drives material inwards to form a proto-bulge. We start from the standard picture of disk formation through the settling of gas into a dark halo potential…
Galaxies above redshift 1 can be very clumpy, with irregular morphologies dominated by star complexes as large as 2 kpc and as massive as a few 10^8 or 10^9 Mo. Their co-moving densities and rapid evolution suggest that most present-day…
We investigate the formation and evolution of giant molecular clouds (GMCs) in a Milky-Way-like disk galaxy with a flat rotation curve. We perform a series of 3D adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) numerical simulations that follow both the…
Until a decade ago, galaxy formation simulations were unable to simultaneously reproduce the observed angular momentum (AM) of galaxy disks and bulges. Improvements in the interstellar medium and stellar feedback modelling, together with…
I present a biased review of when the epoch of formation of galaxies (both disks and ellipticals) maybe took place. I base my arguments in simple (mostly) analytic models that have been recently developed to reproduce most of the observed…
A question central to understanding the origin of our solar system is: how do planets form in circumstellar disks around young stars? Because of the complex nature of the physical processes involved, multi-wavelength observations of large…
The history of galaxy formation via star formation and stellar mass assembly rates is now known with some certainty, yet the connection between high redshift and low redshift galaxy populations is not yet clear. By identifying and studying…
High resolution gravity plus smoothed particle hydrodynamics simulations are used to study the formation of galaxies within the context of hierarchical structure formation. The simulations have sufficient dynamic range to resolve from ten…
This is the summary chapter of a review book on galaxy bulges. Bulge properties and formation histories are more varied than those of ellipticals. I emphasize two advances: 1 - "Classical bulges" are observationally indistinguishable from…
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…
High-redshift star-forming galaxies often have irregular morphologies with {\it giant clumps} containing up to $10^{8-9}$ solar masses of gas and stars. The origin and evolution of giant clumps are debated both theoretically and…
The processes are investigated by which gas loses its angular momentum during the protogalactic collapse phase, leading to disk galaxies that are too compact with respect to the observations. High-resolution N-body/SPH simulations in a…
For several decades now, open clusters have been used to study the structure and chemical evolution of the disk of our Galaxy. Due to the fact that their ages and metallicities can be determined with relatively good precision, and since…
We present a scenario for the formation of disks which explains not only the properties of normal galaxies, but the properties of the population of low surface brightness galaxies (LSBs) as well. We use a gravitationally self-consistent…
This review covers the properties of disks around pre-main--sequence stars. It is at this time in the evolution that planets form, and it is important to understand the properties of these disks to understand planet formation. I discuss…
Whereas the understanding of most phases of stellar evolution made considerable progress throughout the whole of the twentieth century, stellar formation remained rather enigmatic and poorly constrained by observations until about three…
In the light of several recent developments we revisit the phenomenon of galactic stellar disk truncations. Even 25 years since the first paper on outer breaks in the radial light profiles of spiral galaxies, their origin is still unclear.…