Related papers: How do galaxies get their baryons?
Observations of star formation rates (SFRs) in galaxies provide vital clues to the physical nature of the Hubble sequence, and are key probes of the evolutionary properties of galaxies. The focus of this review is on the broad patterns in…
The combination of huge databases of galaxy spectra and advances in evolutionary synthesis models in the past few years has renewed interest in an old question: How to estimate the star formation history of a galaxy out of its integrated…
Spiral galaxies have most of their stellar mass in a large rotating disk, and only a modest fraction in a central spheroidal bulge. This poses a major challenge for cosmological models of galaxy formation. Galaxies form at the centre of…
In this contribution we present the first census of oxygen in star-forming galaxies in the local universe. We examine three samples of galaxies with metallicities and star formation rates at z = 0.07, 0.8 and 2.26, including the SDSS and…
Galaxies strongly self-regulate their growth via energetic feedback from stars, supernovae, and black holes, but these processes are among the least understood aspects of galaxy formation theory. We present an analytic galaxy evolution…
Cosmological simulations of galaxy formation appear to show a two-phase character with a rapid early phase at z>2 during which in-situ stars are formed within the galaxy from infalling cold gas followed by an extended phase since z<3 during…
In the standard model of structure formation, galaxies form in the centre of dark matter haloes that develop as a result of inhomogeneities in the primordial mass distribution of the Universe. Afterwards, galaxies grow by means of…
We use both an HI-selected and an optically-selected galaxy sample to directly measure the abundance of galaxies as a function of their "baryonic" mass (stars + atomic gas). Stellar masses are calculated based on optical data from the Sloan…
Galaxies, in particular disc galaxies, contain a number of structures and substructures with well defined morphological, photometric and kinematic properties. Considerable theoretical effort has been put into explaining their formation and…
Galaxy disk formation must incorporate the multiphase nature of the interstellar medium. The resulting two-phase structure is generated and maintained by gravitational instability and supernova energy input, which yield a source of…
This article reviews the prevailing paradigm for how galaxies and larger structures formed in the universe: gravitational instability. Basic observational facts are summarized to motivate the standard cosmological framework underlying most…
Advances in extragalactic astronomy have prompted the development of increasingly realistic models which aim to describe the formation and evolution of galaxies. We review the philosophy behind one such technique, called semi-analytic…
Empirical star formation laws from the last 20 years are reviewed with a comparison to simulations. The current form in main galaxy disks has a linear relationship between the star formation rate per unit area and the molecular cloud mass…
The observed clustering of galaxies and the cross-correlation of galaxies and mass provide important constraints on both cosmology and models of galaxy formation. Even though the dissipation and feedback processes associated with galaxy…
Hierarchical models of galaxy formation now provide a much closer match to observations than they did a few years ago. The progress has been achieved by adjusting the description of baryonic processes such as star formation and…
Galaxy disks are characterised by star formation histories that vary systematically along the Hubble sequence. We study global star formation, incorporating supernova feedback, gas accretion and enriched outflows in disks modelled by a…
A significant fraction of local galaxies exhibit stellar bars, non-axisymmetric structures composed of stars, gas, and dust. Identifying key differences between the properties of barred and unbarred galaxies can uncover clues about the…
The investigation of the orientation of galaxies is a standard test concerning to scenarios of galaxy formation, because different theories of galaxy formation make various predictions regarding to the angular momentum of galaxies. The new…
Cosmological numerical simulations of galaxy evolution show that accretion of metal-poor gas from the cosmic web drives the star formation in galaxy disks. Unfortunately, the observational support for this theoretical prediction is still…
One major problem of current theoretical models of galaxy formation is given by their inability to reproduce the apparently `anti-hierarchical' evolution of galaxy assembly: massive galaxies appear to be in place since $z\sim 3$, while a…