Related papers: Origin and Evolution of Structure and Nucleosynthe…
Recent observations have revealed a variety of young star clusters, including embedded systems, young massive clusters, and associations. We study the formation and dynamical evolution of these clusters using a combination of simulations…
The evolution of galaxies results from a combination of internal and external processes. The star formation is an internal process transforming cold and dense cores of molecular clouds to stars. It may be triggered internally by expanding…
Correlations between stellar kinematics and chemical abundances are fossil evidence for evolutionary connections between Galactic structural components. Extensive stellar surveys show that the only tolerably clear distinction between…
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…
In this contribution we discuss the expected properties of our halo if our Galaxy had been built from mergers of smaller systems. Using both analytic arguments and high-resolution simulations, we find that the Galactic halo in the Solar…
Studies of nearby galaxies including the Milky Way have provided fundamental information on the evolution of structure in the Universe, the existence and nature of dark matter, the origin and evolution of galaxies, and the global features…
In this review I will discuss the comparison between model results and observational data for the Milky Way, the predictive power of such models as well as their limits. Such a comparison, known as Galactic archaeology, allows us to impose…
The Local Group provides an interesting and representative sample of galaxies in the rest of the Universe. The high accuracy with which many problems can be addressed in Local Group galaxies is of paramount importance for understanding…
We use a numerical simulation of a loose group containing a Milky Way halo to probe that in the hierarchical universe the Magellanic Clouds and some dSphs have been accreted into the Milky Way halo from a late infalling group of dwarfs. Our…
Dwarf galaxies that come too close to larger galaxies suffer tidal disruption; the differential gravitational force between one side of the galaxy and the other serves to rip the stars from the dwarf galaxy so that they instead orbit the…
Stars are fossils that retain the history of their host galaxies. Elements heavier than helium are created inside stars and are ejected when they die. From the spatial distribution of elements in galaxies, it is therefore possible to…
The formation of our Milky Way can be parsed qualitatively into different phases that resulted in its structurally different stellar populations: the halo and the disk components. Revealing a quantitative overall picture of the Galactic…
A new idea is proposed for the origin of bulges in spiral galaxies. Numerical simulations for the protogalactic collapse suggest strongly that galactic bulges have been assembled from massive clumps formed in the galactic disks in their…
Hierarchical Cold Dark Matter (CDM) models predict that Milky Way (MW) sized halos contain hundreds of dense low-mass dark satellites, an order of magnitude more than the number of observed satellites in the Local Group (LG). If the CDM…
In our grid of multiphase chemical evolution models (Moll\'a & D\'iaz, 2005), star formation in the disk occurs in two steps: first, molecular gas forms, and then stars are created by cloud-cloud collisions or interactions of massive stars…
Photoionized nebulae, comprising HII regions and planetary nebulae, are excellent laboratories to investigate the nucleosynthesis and chemical evolution of several elements in the Galaxy and other galaxies of the Local Group. Our purpose in…
Using galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 7 (SDSS DR7) along with haloes from the dark matter only constrained ELUCID (Exploring the Local Universe with the reConstructed Initial Density field) simulation, we examine the…
Ultra compact dwarf galaxies (UCDs) have similar properties as massive globular clusters or the nuclei of nucleated galaxies. Recent observations suggesting a high dark matter content and a steep spatial distribution within groups and…
We present a pedagogical review on the formation and evolution of galaxies in groups, utilizing observational information from the Local Group to galaxies at z~6. The majority of galaxies in the nearby universe are found in groups, and…
We present the study of a set of N-body+SPH simulations of a Milky Way-like system produced by the radiative cooling of hot gas embedded in a dark matter halo. The galaxy and its gaseous halo evolve for 10 Gyr in isolation, which allows us…