Related papers: A galaxy's accretion history unveiled from its int…
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…
A crucial question in galaxy formation is what role new accretion has in star formation. Theoretical models have predicted a wide range of correlation strengths between halo accretion and galaxy star formation. Previously, we presented a…
We adapt an existing data compression algorithm, MOPED, to the extraction of median-likelihood star formation (SF) histories from medium-resolution galaxy spectra. By focusing on the high-pass components of galaxy spectra, we minimize…
We analyse the results of an Eulerian AMR cosmological simulation in order to quantify the mass growth of galaxy clusters, exploring the differences between dark matter and baryons. We have determined the mass assembly histories (MAHs) of…
We present a new statistical method to determine the relationship between the stellar masses of galaxies and the masses of their host dark matter haloes over the entire cosmic history from z~4 to the present. This multi-epoch abundance…
We use the Illustris simulation to study the relative contributions of in situ star formation and stellar accretion to the build-up of galaxies over an unprecedentedly wide range of masses ($M_{\ast} = 10^9-10^{12} \, {\rm M_{\odot}}$),…
Galaxies evolve via a complex interaction of numerous different physical processes, scales and components. In spite of this, overall trends often appear. Simplified models for galaxy histories can be used to search for and capture such…
Long dynamical timescales in the outskirts of galaxies preserve the information content of their accretion histories, for example in the form of stellar population gradients. We present a detailed analysis of the stellar halo properties of…
In the $\Lambda$-Cold Dark Matter model of the Universe, galaxies form in part through accreting satellite systems. Previous work have built an understanding of the signatures of these processes contained within galactic stellar halos. This…
Over the last decades, evolutionary population synthesis models have powered an unmatched leap forward in our understanding of galaxies. From dating the age of the first galaxies in the Universe to detailed measurements of the chemical…
The stellar halos of galaxies encode their accretion histories. In particular, the median metallicity of a halo is determined primarily by the mass of the most massive accreted object. We use hydrodynamical cosmological simulations from the…
In this work, I explore an empirically motivated model for investigating the relationship between galaxy stellar masses, star formation rates and their halo masses and mass accretion histories. The core statistical quantity in this model is…
The combination of huge databases of galaxy spectra and advances in evolutionary synthesis models in the past few years has renewed interest in an old question: How to estimate the star formation history of a galaxy out of its integrated…
We are interested in investigating the growth of structures at the nonlinear scales of galaxy clusters from an observational perspective: we explore the possibility of measuring the mass accretion rate of galaxy clusters from their mass…
The Milky Way is a mosaic of stars from different origins. In particular, metal-poor accreted star candidates offer a unique opportunity to better understand the accretion history of the Milky Way. In this work, we aim to explore the…
In the $\Lambda$CDM paradigm, stellar halos form through the accretion and disruption of satellite galaxies. We introduce new semi-analytic modeling within the SatGen framework to track the ex-situ stellar components of Milky Way--like…
We apply the spectral energy distribution (SED) fitting code ProSpect to multiwavelength imaging for $\sim$7,000 galaxies from the GAMA survey at $z<0.06$, in order to extract their star formation histories. We combine a parametric…
We present a simple physical mechanism that can account for the observed stellar mass spectrum for masses $\ms \simgreat 0.5 \solm$. The model depends solely on the competitive accretion that occurs in stellar clusters where each star's…
Metal-poor stars are key for studying the formation and evolution of the Galaxy. Evidence of the early mergers that built up the Galaxy remains in the distributions of abundances, kinematics, and orbital parameters of its stars. Several…
We investigate the age-chemical abundance structure of the outer Galactic disc at a galactocentric distance of r > 10 kpc as recently revealed by the SDSS/APOGEE survey. Two sequences are present in the [alpha/Fe]-[Fe/H] plane with…