Related papers: Galactic Disk Formation and the Angular Momentum P…
Quantification of the Galaxy's star formation history involves both the duration and the rate of formation, with these parameters being known with different precision for different populations. The early rate of star formation is knowable…
The most recent results and some of the open key questions on the evolution of early-type galaxies are reviewed in the general cosmological context of massive galaxy formation.
Self-gravitating systems evolve toward the most tightly bound configuration that is reachable via available evolution processes. The inner parts shrink and the outer parts expand, provided that some physical process transports energy or…
The abundance gradients and the radial gas profile of the Galactic disc are analysed by means of a model for the chemical evolution of galaxies. As one of the major uncertainties in models for galaxy evolution is the star formation (SF)…
Nearly all of the initial angular momentum of the matter that goes into each forming star must somehow be removed or redistributed during the formation process. The possible transport mechanisms and the possible fates of the excess angular…
This white paper is motivated by open questions in star formation, which can be uniquely addressed by high resolution X-ray imaging and require an X-ray observatory with large collecting area along good spectral resolution. A complete…
As the likely birthplaces of planets and an essential conduit for the buildup of stellar masses, inner disks are of fundamental interest in star and planet formation. Studies of the gaseous component of inner disks are of interest because…
We report the first robust measurement of the Milky Way star formation history using the imprint left on chemical abundances of long-lived stars. The formation of the Galactic thick disc occurs during an intense star formation phase between…
The great diversity of extrasolar planetary systems has challenged our understanding of how planets form, and how their orbits evolve as they form. Among the various processes that may account for this diversity, the gravitational…
We study the structure and evolution of the very early protostellar disk (``protodisk'') just after protostar formation, where disk self-gravity dominates and the stellar contribution is dynamically minor. The disk redistributes angular…
We use a state-of-the-art semi-analytic model to study the size and the specific angular momentum of galaxies. Our model includes a specific treatment for the angular momentum exchange between different galactic components. Disk scale radii…
We investigate the formation and evolution of circumstellar disks in turbulent cloud cores until several 104 years after protostar formation using smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) calculations. The formation and evolution process of…
(Abridged) In these lectures aimed for non-specialists, I review progress in understanding how galaxies form and evolve. Both the star formation history and assembly of stellar mass can be empirically traced from redshifts z~6 to the…
The recent identification of one or two sub-parsec disks of young, massive stars orbiting the ~4e6 solar mass black hole Sgr A* has prompted an "in-situ" scenario for star formation in disks of gas formed from a cloud captured from the…
We study the dynamics of galactic disk formation and evolution in 'realistic' LambdaCDM haloes with idealized baryonic initial conditions. We add rotating spheres of hot gas at z=1.3 to two fully cosmological dark-matter-only halo…
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…
[Abridged] One of the most outstanding problems related to numerical models of galaxy formation is the so-called ``angular momentum catastrophe''. We study the evolution of the angular momentum from z~0.6 to z=0 to further our understanding…
Motivated by Genzel et al.'s observations of high-redshift star-forming galaxies, containing clumpy and turbulent rings or disks, we build a set of equations describing the dynamical evolution of gaseous disks with inclusion of star…
We argue that star formation in the disks of low-surface-brightness (LSB) galaxies shares a similar nature with that occurring in the far outer regions of normal-brightness spiral galaxies, such as those with the extended ultraviolet (XUV)…
Improving our understanding of the initial conditions and earliest stages of star formation is crucial to gain insight into the origin of stellar masses, multiple systems, and protoplanetary disks. We review the properties of low-mass dense…