Related papers: Galaxy evolution begins at home: GALFA, EVLA, and …
Theories of how galaxies, the fundamental constituents of large-scale structure, form and evolve have undergone a dramatic paradigm shift in the last few decades. Earlier views were of rapid, early collapse and formation of basic…
(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…
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…
Galaxy haloes contain fundamental clues about the galaxy formation and evolution process: hierarchical cosmological models predict haloes to be ubiquitous, and to be (at least in part) the product of past merger and/or accretion events. The…
The development of primordial inhomogeneities into the non-linear regime and the formation of the first astrophysical objects within dark matter halos mark the transition from a simple, neutral, cooling universe -- described by just a few…
HI in and around galaxies provides unique information about the various processes shaping galaxies: merging, cold gas accretion, feedback. Observations of galaxies in the nearby universe are beginning to reveal the HI signatures of these…
The SKA is a unique instrument to open a window on many aspects of galaxy formation and evolution which can be examined in our Local Universe. Here I will focus on the outermost regions of galaxies which can be observed with sufficient…
We explore the motivation behind large stellar surveys in Galactic astronomy, in particular, surveys that measure the photometric, phase space and abundance properties of thousands or millions of stars. These observations are essential to…
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…
The history of the formation and evolution of the Milky Way Galaxy is found in the spatial distribution, kinematics, age and chemical abundance distributions of long-lived stars. From this fossil record one can in principle extract the star…
Star clusters and their stellar populations play a significant role in the context of galaxy evolution, across space (from local to high redshift) and time (from currently forming to fossil remnants). We are now within reach of answering a…
If we are to develop a comprehensive and predictive theory of galaxy formation and evolution, it is essential that we obtain an accurate assessment of how and when galaxies assemble their stellar populations, and how this assembly varies…
The cold interstellar medium (ISM) plays a central role in the galaxy evolution process. It is the reservoir that fuels galaxy growth via star formation, the repository of material formed by these stars, and a sensitive tracer of internal…
The two major functions in galaxy evolution that we would like to measure are the stellar populations in galaxies, and their time-derivative, the star formation rate. Especially at redshifts above 1, both of these measures are benefiting…
The properties of the first galaxies are shaped in large part by the first generations of stars, which emit high energy radiation and unleash both large amounts of mechanical energy and the first heavy elements when they explode as…
Initial conditions are set by Big bang nucleosynthesis from which we know that 90 per cent of baryons are dark and have essentially unknown chemical composition. In our own Galaxy, there are many clues from individual stars in different…
Massive black holes (MBHs) are nowadays recognized as integral parts of galaxy evolution. Both the approximate proportionality between MBH and galaxy mass, and the expected importance of feedback from active MBHs in regulating star…
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…
Studying the average properties of galaxies at a fixed comoving number density over a wide redshift range has become a popular observational method, because it may trace the evolution of galaxies statistically. We test this method by…
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…