Related papers: The remnant of a merger between two dwarf galaxies…
The Giant Stellar Stream (GSS) is a prominent tidal feature in the halo of the Andromeda Galaxy (M31), representing the ongoing destruction of a satellite galaxy. In this paper, we investigate the formation of the GSS through detailed…
Using N-body simulations we study the origin of prolate rotation recently detected in the kinematic data for And II, a dSph satellite of M31. We propose an evolutionary model for the origin of And II involving a merger between two disky…
Within the hierarchical framework for galaxy formation, merging and tidal interactions are expected to shape large galaxies to this day. While major mergers are quite rare at present, minor mergers and satellite disruptions - which result…
The massive galaxies in the young universe, ten billion years ago, formed stars at surprising intensities. Although this is commonly attributed to violent mergers, the properties of many of these galaxies are incompatible with such events,…
It has been proposed that mergers induce starbursts and lead to important morphological changes in galaxies. Most studies so far have focused on large galaxies, but dwarfs might also experience such events, since the halo mass function is…
Motivated by the discovery of prolate rotation of stars in Andromeda II, a dwarf spheroidal companion of M31, we study its origin via mergers of disky dwarf galaxies. We simulate merger events between two identical dwarfs changing the…
In a Lambda CDM Universe, galaxies grow in mass both through star formation and through addition of already-formed stars in galaxy mergers. Because of this partial decoupling of these two modes of galaxy growth, I discuss each separately in…
Detailed studies of stellar populations in the halos of the Milky Way and the Andromeda (M 31) galaxies have shown increasing numbers of tidal streams and dwarf galaxies, attesting to a complicated and on-going process of hierarchical…
Stellar streams -- formed from tidally stripped globular clusters or dwarf galaxies -- are sensitive tracers of a galaxy's accretion history and gravitational potential. While numerous streams are known in the Milky Way (MW), the formation…
The merging history of galaxies can be traced with studies of dynamically close pairs. These consist of a massive primary galaxy and a less massive secondary (or satellite) galaxy. The study of the stellar populations of secondary (lower…
Many of the Milky Way's globular clusters are likely accreted from satellite galaxies that have long since merged with the Milky Way. When these globular clusters are susceptible to tidal disruption, this process likely starts already…
Galaxy merger histories correlate strongly with stellar mass, largely regardless of morphology. Thus, at fixed stellar mass, spheroids and discs share similar assembly histories, both in terms of the frequency of mergers and the…
In this work, we look for evidence of a non-unity mass ratio binary dwarf galaxy merger in the Sagittarius stream. Simulations of such a merger show that, upon merging with a host, particles from the less-massive galaxy will often mostly be…
Determining how galaxies accumulate stellar mass is paramount to understanding the Universe. Two primary mechanisms drive this process: star-formation (SF) & mergers. Our understanding of star formation, and to some degree the processes…
Tidal streams from existing and destroyed satellite galaxies populate the outer regions of the Andromeda galaxy (M31). This inhomogeneous debris can be studied without many of the obstacles that plague Milky Way research. We review the…
We study the infall of a subhalo in its parent halo due to dynamical friction. Using expected mass and spatial distributions of subhaloes, in unison with the derived infall time-scale, we calculate the expected merger stellar mass growth…
Recent images taken with the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) of the interacting disk galaxies NGC 4038/4039 (the Antennae) reveal clusters of many dozens and possibly hundreds of young compact massive star clusters within projected regions…
Recent observations of galaxy mergers inside galaxy cluster environments report high star formation rates in the ejected tidal tails, which point towards currently developing tidal dwarf galaxies. We test whether these dwarf objects could…
A central tenet of the current cosmological paradigm is that galaxies grow over time through the accretion of smaller systems. Here, we present new kinematic measurements near the centre of one of the densest pronounced substructures, the…
We explore a model in which efficient star formation in galaxies is triggered by merging satellites. We show that the merger/interaction rates predicted by hierarchical galaxy formation models depend strongly on galaxy mass. If a merger of…