Related papers: Structures in galaxies: nature versus nurture. Inp…
In the current galaxy formation scenarios, two physical phenomena are invoked to build disk galaxies: hierarchical mergers and more quiescent external gas accretion, coming from intergalactic filaments. Although both are thought to play a…
The study of the internal structure of star clusters provides important clues concerning their formation mechanism and dynamical evolution. There are both observational and numerical evidences indicating that open clusters evolve from an…
To understand galaxies and their evolution, it is necessary to describe how the different scales interact: how the microscopic physics, such as star formation, or the large scale physics, such as galaxy interactions may modify the galaxy…
The structure and dynamics of dark matter halos, as predicted by the hierarchical clustering scenario, are at odds with the properties inferred from the observations at galactic scales. My Thesis addresses this problem by taking an…
Much of our effort in understanding the long-term evolution and morphology of the Milky Way and other galaxies has focused on the equilibrium of its luminous disk. However, the interplay between all components, seen and unseen, is a major…
[ABRIDGED] Galaxy evolution is shaped by internal and external mechanisms that regulate the baryon cycle and star formation activity. We present a theoretical framework based on the GAlaxy Evolution and Assembly (GAEA) semi-analytic model.…
Observations have revealed that most stars are born in clusters. These systems, containing from tens to thousands of stars and typically significant mass in gas in the youngest systems, evolve due to a combination of stellar and star-gas…
The standard disc formation scenario postulates that disc forms as the gas cools and flows into the centre of the dark matter halo, conserving the specific angular momentum. Major mergers have been shown to be able to destroy or highly…
We review the current theory of how galaxies form within the cosmological framework provided by the cold dark matter paradigm for structure formation. Beginning with the pre-galactic evolution of baryonic material we describe the analytical…
The standard theory of cosmic structure formation posits that the present-day rich structure of the Universe developed through gravitational amplification of tiny matter density fluctuations generated in its very early history. Recent…
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…
Accumulation of new data on stellar hierarchical systems and the progress in numerical simulations of their formation open the door to genetic classification of these systems, where properties of a certain group (family) of objects are…
We discuss how the centres of galaxy clusters evolve in time, showing the results of a series of direct N-body simulations. In particular, we followed the evolution of a galaxy cluster with a mass $M_{clus} \simeq 10^{14} $M$_{\odot}$ in…
Their ubiquity and extreme densities make star clusters probes of prime importance of galaxy evolution. Old globular clusters keep imprints of the physical conditions of their assembly in the early Universe, and younger stellar objects,…
Galactic disk formation requires knowledge about the initial conditions under which disk galaxies form, the boundary conditions that affect their secular evolution and the micro-physical processes that drive the multi-phase interstellar…
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 review focuses on how galaxies and their globular cluster systems form. I first discuss the now fairly convincing evidence that some globular clusters form in galaxy starbursts/mergers. One way these observations are valuable is they…
Explaining the formation and evolution of galaxies is one of the most challenging problems in observational cosmology. Many observations suggest that galaxies we see today could have evolved from the merging of smaller subsystems. Evolution…
Nearly a century after the true nature of galaxies as distant "island universes" was established, their origin and evolution remain great unsolved problems of modern astrophysics. One of the most promising ways to investigate galaxy…
We present the results of a series of numerical simulations aimed to study the evolution of a disc galaxy within the global tidal field of a group environment. Both the disc galaxy and the group are modelled as multi-component,…