Related papers: Dynamics for Galactic Archaeology
When and how did galaxies form and their metals accumulate? Over the last decade, this has moved from an archeological question to a live investigation: there is now a broad picture of the evolution of galaxies in dark matter halos: their…
Galaxies are complex systems the evolution of which apparently results from the interplay of dynamics, star formation, chemical enrichment, and feedback from supernova explosions and supermassive black holes. The hierarchical theory of…
This paper reports simulations allowing for stochastic accretion and mass loss within closed and open systems modeled using a previously developed multi-population, multi-zone (halo, thick disk, thin disk) treatment. The star formation rate…
In this paper we adopt a chemical evolution model, which is an improved version of the Chiappini, Matteucci and Gratton (1997) model, assuming two main accretion episodes for the formation of the Galaxy. The present model takes into account…
Disks of gas accreting onto supermassive black holes may host numerous stellar-mass objects, formed within the disk or captured from a nuclear star cluster. We present a simplified model of stellar evolution applicable to these dense…
Cosmology requires at least half of the baryons in the Universe to be in the intergalactic medium, much of which is believed to form hot coronae around galaxies. Star-forming galaxies must be accreting from their coronae. HI observations of…
We use cosmological SPH simulations to study the kinematic signatures of cool gas accretion onto a pair of well-resolved galaxy halos. Cold-flow streams and gas-rich mergers produce a circum-galactic component of cool gas that generally…
Our Milky Way Galaxy is a typical large spiral galaxy, representative of the most common morphological type in the local Universe. We can determine the properties of individual stars in unusual detail, and use the characteristics of the…
I discuss various proposed formation scenarios for the metal-poor components of the Milky Way Galaxy, emphasising the stellar halo and the thick disk. Interactions and accretion played a significant role in Galactic evolution, in particular…
Theory predicts that cosmological gas accretion plays a fundamental role fuelling star formation in galaxies. However, a detailed description of the accretion process to be used when interpreting observations is still lacking. Using the…
We introduce a toy model that describes (in a single equation) the mass in stars as a function of halo mass and redshift. Our model includes the suppression of gas accretion from gravitational shock heating and AGN jets mainly for M_halo >…
Cold-mode gas accretion onto galaxies is a direct prediction of LCDM simulations and provides galaxies with fuel that allows them to continue to form stars over the lifetime of the Universe. Given its dramatic influence on a galaxy's gas…
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…
Standard models for the chemical evolution of the Galaxy are reviewed with particular emphasis on the history of the abundance gradients in the disk. The effects on the disk structure and metallicity of gas accretion are discussed, showing…
Explaining the formation and evolution of galaxies is one of the most challenging problems in observational cosmology. Many observations suggest that galaxies we see today could have evolved from the merging of smaller subsystems. Evolution…
Molecular clouds are the principle stellar nurseries of our universe, keeping them in the focus of both observational and theoretical studies. From observations, some of the key properties of molecular clouds are well known but many…
We consider the consequences of applying general relativity to the description of the dynamics of a galaxy, given the observed flattened rotation curves. The galaxy is modeled as a stationary axially symmetric pressure-free fluid. In spite…
The satellites of the Milky Way and Andromeda represent the smallest galaxies we can observe in our Universe. In this series of papers we aim to shed light on their formation and evolution using cosmological hydrodynamical simulations. In…
We construct a new family of models of our Galaxy in which dark matter and disc stars are both represented by distribution functions that are analytic functions of the action integrals of motion. The potential that is self-consistently…
Dynamical evolution of spiral galaxies is strongly dependent on non-axisymmetric patterns that develop from gravitational instabilities, either spontaneously or externally triggered. Some evolutionary sequences are described through which a…