Related papers: Stellar Archaeology: New Science with Old Stars
We present unified chemical and spectrophotometric evolutionary synthesis models that allow to describe composite stellar populations in a chemically consistent way. Keeping track of the ISM abundance at birth of each star and using sets of…
The trends of chemical abundances and abundance ratios observed in stars of different ages, kinematics, and metallicities bear the imprints of several physical processes that concur to shape the host galaxy properties. By inspecting these…
During these last decades, our knowledge of evolutionary and structural properties of stars of different mass and chemical composition is significantly improved. This result has been achieved as a consequence of our improved capability in…
We describe how star formation is expected to proceed in the early metal-free Universe, focusing on the very first generations of stars. We then discuss how the star formation process may change as the effects of metallicity, external…
The formation of stars is a key process in the early universe with far reaching consequences for further cosmic evolution. While stars forming from truly primordial gas are thought to be considerably more massive than our Sun, stars in the…
Spiral galaxies offer a unique opportunity to study the role of star formation in galaxy evolution and to test various theoretical star formation schemes. I review some recent relevant work on the evolution of spiral galaxies. Detailed…
Reconstructing the chemical evolution of the Milky Way is crucial for understanding the formation of stars, planets, and galaxies throughout cosmic time. Different studies associated with element production in the early universe and how…
We discuss the evolutionary properties of primordial massive and very massive stars, supposed to have formed from metal-free gas. Stellar models are presented over a large range of initial masses (8 Msun <= Mi <= 1000 Msun), covering the…
Abundance observations indicate the presence of rapid-neutron capture (i.e., r-process) elements in old Galactic halo and globular cluster stars. These observations provide insight into the nature of the earliest generations of stars in the…
A brief review on globular cluster sub-populations in galaxies, and their constraints on galaxy formation and evolution is given. The metal-poor and metal-rich sub-populations are put in a historical context, and their properties, as known…
Galaxies cover a wide range of masses and star formation histories. In this review, I summarize some of the evolutionary key features of common galaxy types. At the high-mass end, very rapid, efficient early star formation is observed,…
Ground- and space-based observations of stellar heavy element abundances are providing a clearer picture of the chemical evolution of the Galaxy. A large number of (r)apid and (s)low neutron capture process elements, including the first…
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,…
Oxygen and carbon-rich AGB stars - and objects directly polluted by them - are excellent laboratories to investigate the nucleosynthesis and mixing processes occurring during the later phases of the of low- and intermediate-mass star…
Dark Stars are the very first phase of stellar evolution in the history of the universe: the first stars to form (typically at redshifts $z \sim 10-50$) are powered by heating from dark matter (DM) annihilation instead of fusion (if the DM…
The earliest phases of the chemical evolution of our Galaxy are analysed in the light of the recent VLT results (concerning abundance patterns in the most metal-poor stars of the Galactic halo) and of stellar nucleosynthesis calculations.…
The entire evolution of the Milky Way, including its mass-assembly and star-formation history, is imprinted onto the chemo-dynamical distribution function of its member stars, f(x, v, [X/H]), in the multi-dimensional phase space spanned by…
Understanding stellar composition is fundamental not only to our comprehension of the galaxy, especially chemical evolution, but it can also shed light on the interior structure and mineralogy of exoplanets, which are formed from the same…
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 Milky Way is a spiral galaxy comprising three main components: the Bulge, the Disk, and the Halo. Of particular interest is the Galactic disk, which holds a significant portion of the baryonic matter angular momentum and harbors at…