Related papers: Exponential Galaxy Disks from Stellar Scattering
We present the results of a detailed study of vertical surface brightness profiles of edge-on disk galaxies. Although the exponential disk scale height is constant to first order approximation, we show that for the large majority of…
We study the distribution of bright star-forming complexes in a homogeneous sample of 72 late-type (``irregular'') dwarf galaxies located within the 10 Mpc volume. Star-forming complexes are identified as bright lumps in B-band galaxy…
High spatial and spectral resolution observations of star formation and kinematics in early galaxies have shown that two-thirds are massive rotating disk galaxies with the remainder being less massive non-rotating objects. The line of sight…
Some points related to the exponential instability of N-body gravitating systems and which are misinterpreted in various papers are clarified. Exponential instability is a phenomenon essentially responsible for the relaxation, evolutionary,…
The formation and evolution of galactic disks is particularly important for understanding how galaxies form and evolve, and the cause of the variety in which they appear to us. Ongoing large surveys, made possible by new instrumentation at…
Massive stars may during their evolution reach the phase of critical rotation when the further increase in rotational speed is no longer possible. The ejection of matter in the equatorial region forms the gaseous outflowing disk, which…
We develop an idealized dynamical model to predict the typical properties of outer extrasolar planetary systems, at radii beyond 5 AU. Our hypothesis is that dynamical evolution in outer planetary systems is controlled by a combination of…
In this paper, we calculate simulated scattered light images of a circumstellar disk in which a planet is forming by gravitational instability. The simulated images bear no correlation to the vertically integrated surface density of the…
We predict polarimetric line profiles for scattering off rotating disks using a Monte Carlo technique. We have discovered that there is a marked difference between scattering of line emission by a disk that reaches the stellar surface, and…
We explore the elemental abundance features of metal-rich disk stars, highlighting the comparisons made with those of the recently revealed Galactic bulge stars. A similarity between two of the comparisons leads to a new theoretical picture…
The surface-brightness profiles of galaxy disks fall into three main classes, based on whether they are simple exponentials (Type I), bend down at large radii (Type II, "truncations") or bend up at large radii (Type III, "antitruncations").…
We study the dynamics of a vertically thin, dispersion-dominated disk of planetesimals with eccentricities $e$ and inclinations $i$ (normalized in Hill units) satisfying $e >> 1$, $i << e^{-2} << 1$. This situation may be typical for e.g. a…
We identify a new secular instability of eccentric stellar disks around supermassive black holes. We show that retrograde precession of the stellar orbits, due to the presence of a stellar cusp, induces coherent torques that amplify…
We present new models for the formation of disk galaxies that improve upon previous models by following the detailed accretion and cooling of the baryonic mass, and by using realistic distributions of specific angular momentum. Under the…
We show that the exponential growth rate of a bar in a stellar disk is substantially greater when the disk is embedded in a live halo than in a rigid one having the same mass distribution. We also find that the vigor of the instability in…
The origin of metal-rich, highly flattened, and rapidly rotating disk globular cluster system in the Galaxy is one of longstanding issues in the context of the Galaxy formation. Our numerical simulations suggest a new ``two-fold'' scenario…
We report idealized simulations that mimic the growth of galaxy disks embedded in responsive halos and bulges. The disks manifested an almost overwhelming tendency to form strong bars that we found very difficult to prevent. We found that…
We characterize empirically the radial diffusion of stars in the plane of a typical barred disk galaxy by calculating the local spatial diffusion coefficient and diffusion time-scale for bulge-disk-halo N-body self-consistent systems which…
The nucleus of M31 may be a thick eccentric disk, composed of stars traveling on nearly Keplerian orbits around a black hole or other dark compact object. This hypothesis reproduces most of the features seen in HST photometry of the center…
Although the basic physics of star formation is classical, numerical simulations have yielded essential insights into how stars form. They show that star formation is a highly nonuniform runaway process characterized by the emergence of…