Related papers: Dynamics for Galactic Archaeology
We study the formation of galaxies by using $N$-body/hydrodynamics simulations to investigate how baryons collect at the centre of dark matter halos. We treat the dark matter as a collisionless fluid and the baryons as an ideal gas. We…
Galaxies in clusters are gas-deficient and a number of possible explanations for this observation have been advanced, including galaxy-cluster tidal interactions, galaxy harassment, and ISM-ICM gas stripping. In this paper, we use a…
Star formation depends on the available gaseous "fuel" as well as galactic environment, with higher specific star formation rates where gas is predominantly molecular and where stellar (and dark matter) densities are higher. The partition…
The evolution of the content of heavy elements in galaxies, the relative chemical abundances, their spatial distribution, and how these scale with various galactic properties, provide unique information on the galactic evolutionary…
Throughout the Hubble time, gas makes its way from the intergalactic medium into galaxies fuelling their star formation and promoting their growth. One of the key properties of the accreting gas is its angular momentum, which has profound…
I review the subject of the cosmological evolution of galaxies, including different aspects of growth in disk galaxies, by focussing on the angular momentum problem, mergers, and their by-products. I discuss the alternative to merger-driven…
Internal dynamical evolution can drive stellar systems into states of high central density. For many star clusters and galactic nuclei, the time scale on which this occurs is significantly less than the age of the universe. As a result,…
The Milky Way disc presents a warp, a flare, lopsidedness and other deviations from a purely axisymmetrical double exponential density component, both for the stellar and the gas component. Moreover, recent large-scale extended kinematics…
We discuss the main ingredients necessary to build models of chemical evolution of spiral galaxies and in particular the Milky Way galaxy. These ingredients include: the star formation rate, the initial mass function, the stellar yields and…
We introduce a multi-component chemo-dynamical method for splitting the Galactic population of Globular Clusters (GCs) into three distinct constituents: bulge, disc, and stellar halo. The latter is further decomposed into the individual…
Adopting a single-zone framework, with accretion of primordial gas on a free-fall timescale, the chemical evolution of the Galactic bulge is calculated, assuming (i) a corresponding rapid timescale for star formation, and (ii) an initial…
The old dream of integrating into one the study of micro and macrocosmos is now a reality. Cosmology, astrophysics, and particle physics intersect in a scenario (but still not a theory) of cosmic structure formation and evolution called…
Compact groups of galaxies have posed a number of challenging questions. Intensive observational and theoretical studies are now providing answers to many of these, and at the same time, are revealing unexpected new clues about the nature…
In this lecture I will introduce the concept of galactic chemical evolution, namely the study of how and where the chemical elements formed and how they were distributed in the stars and gas in galaxies. The main ingredients to build models…
Structure of a quasi-stationary stellar cluster is modelled assuming that it is embedded in the gravitational field of a super-massive black hole. Gradual orbital decay of stellar trajectories is caused by the dissipative interaction with…
If the Galaxy formed hierarchically through the accretion of smaller satellite galaxies we might hope to find signatures of this in the halo's phase-space distribution. I review theoretical ideas about what form these signatures should…
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…
We examine the origin of radial and vertical gradients in the age/metallicity of the stellar component of a galaxy disc formed in the APOSTLE cosmological hydrody- namical simulations. Some of these gradients resemble those in the Milky…
Galaxies are not isolated systems; they continuously interact with their surroundings by ejecting gas via stellar feedback and accreting gas from the environment. Understanding the interplay between outflows from the disc and the…
Our Galaxy, the Milky Way, is a benchmark for understanding disk galaxies. It is the only galaxy whose formation history can be studied using the full distribution of stars from white dwarfs to supergiants. The oldest components provide us…