Related papers: Galactic disks and their evolution
The Galactic center stellar disk and the circumnuclear ring provide a unique opportunity to study in detail the dynamics and physical conditions of distant molecular disks in the nuclei of galaxies. One of the key questions is how these…
In hierarchical galaxy formation the stellar halos of galaxies are formed by the accretion of minor satellites and therefore contain valuable information about the (early) assembly process of galaxies. Our GHOSTS survey measures the stellar…
Stellar halos of galaxies retain crucial clues to their mass assembly history. It is in these galactic components that the remains of cannibalised galactic building blocks are deposited. For the case of the Milky Way, the opportunity to…
Much of our understanding of dark matter halos comes from the assumption that the mass-to-light ratio (M/L) of spiral disks is constant. The best way to test this hypothesis is to measure the disk surface mass density directly via the…
We review some of our recent progress in modelling the formation of disk galaxies in the framework of hierarchical structure formation. Our model is not only consistent with the local observations, but also provides a good description of…
The formation, structure and evolution of protoplanetary discs is considered. The formation of giant planets within the environment of these models is also discussed.
In this review I focus on how massive stars in the disks of galaxies determine the properties of the ionized, gaseous haloes of star-forming galaxies. I first examine the ionization state of the halo, and conclude that diluted radiation…
Masses of black holes in nearby galactic nuclei can be measured in a variety of ways, using stellar and gaseous kinematics. Reliable black hole masses are known for several dozen objects, so that demographic questions can start to be…
We study the vertical density distribution of stars and gas (HI and H_2) in a galactic disk which is embedded in a dark matter halo. The new feature of this work is the inclusion of gas, and the gravitational coupling between stars and gas,…
We introduce a model which uses semi-analytic techniques to trace formation and evolution of galaxy disks in their cosmological context. For the first time we model the growth of gas and stellar disks separately. In contrast to previous…
Gravitational lensing is one of a number of methods used to probe the distribution of dark mass in the Universe. On galactic scales, complementary techniques include the use of stellar kinematics, kinematics and morphology of the neutral…
We analyze the structural and dynamical properties of disk-like objects formed in fully consistent cosmological simulations with an inefficient star formation algorithm. Comparison with data of similar observable properties of spiral…
Gravitational lensing has now become a popular tool to measure the mass distribution of structures in the Universe on various scales. Here we focus on the study of galaxy's scale dark matter halos with galaxy-galaxy lensing techniques:…
Galaxies form and evolve in the context of their local and large-scale environments. Their baryonic content that we observe with imaging and spectroscopy is intimately connected to the properties of their dark matter halos, and to their…
We develop a detailed model of the Milky Way (a ``prototypical'' disk galaxy) and extend it to other disks with the help of some simple scaling relations, obtained in the framework of Cold Dark Matter models. This phenomenological…
The central regions of galaxies show the presence of massive black holes and/or dense stellar systems. The question about their modes of formation is still under debate. A likely explanation of the formation of the central dense stellar…
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…
We study global star formation thresholds in the outer parts of galaxies by investigating the stability of disk galaxies embedded in dark halos. The disks are self-gravitating, contain metals and dust, and are exposed to UV radiation. We…
I review recent progress from $N$-body simulations in our understanding of the secular evolution of isolated disk galaxies. I describe some of the recent controversies in the field which have been commonly attributed to numerics. The…
The star-formation histories of the main stellar components of the Milky Way constrain critical aspects of galaxy formation and evolution. I discuss recent determinations of such histories, together with their interpretation in terms of…