Related papers: Theoretical Models of the Galactic Bulge
Our 'home galaxy' - the Milky Way - is a fairly large spiral galaxy, prototype of the most common morphological class in the local Universe. Although being only a galaxy, it is the only one that can be studied in unique detail: for the…
Recent GLIMPSE data have further confirmed the hypothesis of the existence of an in-plane long bar different from the bulge of the Milky Way with the same characteristics as emphasized some years ago by our team. In this paper, we present…
A short overview is presented of several topics concerning the evolution of the Milky Way (MW) in a cosmological context. In particular, the metallicity distribution of the MW halo is derived analytically and the halo metallicity and…
Observations of the stellar content of the bulge of the Milky Way can provide critical guidelines for the interpretation of observations of distant galaxies, in particular for understanding their stellar content and evolution. In this brief…
We present an analysis of the structure, kinematics, and chemo-dynamical properties of the Milky Way bulge using RR Lyrae stars from OGLE, and giant stars from APOGEE and Gaia that have distances placing them in the inner Galaxy. Firstly,…
We show by numerical simulations that a purely stellar dynamical model composed of an exponential disc, a cuspy bulge, and an NFW halo with parameters relevant to the Milky Way Galaxy is subject to bar formation. Taking into account the…
The nature, size and orientation of the dominant structural components in the Milky Way's inner ~4 kpc - specifically the bulge and bar - have been the subject of conflicting interpretations in the literature. We present a different…
In the center of the Milky Way, as well as in many other galaxies, a compact star cluster around a very massive black hole is observed. One of the possible explanations for the formation of such Nuclear Star Clusters is based on the…
Inspecting all 1224 edge-on disk galaxies larger than 2' in the RC3 on DSS images we have found several galaxies with extraordinary bulges meeting two criteria: They are box shaped and large in respect to the diameters of their galaxies.…
Our knowledge on the central components of disk galaxies has grown substantially in the past few decades, particularly so in the last. This frantic activity and the complexity of the subject promote confusion in the community. In these…
We investigate thin and thick stellar disc formation in Milky-Way-mass galaxies using twelve FIRE-2 cosmological zoom-in simulations. All simulated galaxies experience an early period of bursty star formation that transitions to a late-time…
From this vast subject, I will pick out and review three specific topics, namely the formation and evolution of bars, the formation of bulges, and the evolution during multiple major mergers. Bars form naturally in galactic discs. Their…
An algorithm is developed and tested for the problem posed by photometric observations of the bulge of the Milky Way. The latter subtends a non-trivial solid angle on the sky, and we show that this permits inversion of the projected…
Galaxy flybys are as common as mergers in low redshift universe and are important for galaxy evolution as they involve the exchange of significant amounts of mass and energy. In this study we investigate the effect of minor flybys on the…
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 finding of a double red clump in the luminosity function of the Milky Way bulge has been interpreted as evidence for an X-shaped structure. Recently, an alternative explanation has been suggested, where the double red clump is an effect…
Galactic bulges are complex systems. Once thought to be small-scale versions of elliptical galaxies, advances in astronomical instrumentation (spectroscopy in particular) has revealed a wealth of photometric and kinematic substructure in…
The chemical evolution of the Galactic bulge is treated here in the context of an inside-out model for the Galaxy formation. We assume that this central region evolved even faster than the Galactic halo and test the effect of changing the…
The stellar populations of the stellar halo and of the thick disk of the Milky Way reveal much about the merging history that our Galaxy, a typical large disk galaxy, has experienced. Our current understanding, described here, implies a…
The Milky Way galaxy is surrounded by a circumgalactic medium (CGM) that may play a key role in galaxy evolution as the source of gas for star formation and a repository of metals and energy produced by star formation and nuclear activity.…