Related papers: Secular evolution and pseudo-bulges
We combine deep optical and IR photometry for 326 spiral galaxies from two recent galaxy samples and report that the surface brightness profiles of late-type spirals are best fit by two exponentials. Moreover, the ratio of bulge and disk…
We determine central values and radial trends in the stellar populations of the bulges of a sample of 28 edge-on S0-Sb disk galaxies, 22 of which are boxy/peanut-shaped (and therefore barred). Our principal findings are the following. (1)…
Disk galaxies evolve over time through processes that may rearrange both the radial mass profile and the metallicity distribution within the disk. This review of such slow changes is largely, though not entirely, restricted to…
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…
We present HST/ACS observations of ten galaxies that host narrow-line Seyfert 1 (NLS1) nuclei, believed to contain relatively smaller mass black holes accreting at high Eddington ratios. We deconvolve each ACS image into a nuclear point…
Deep surveys conducted during the past decades have shown that galaxies in the distant universe are generally of more irregular shapes, and are disky in appearance and in their star formation rate, compared to galaxies in similar…
The main requirements for fueling an active galactic nucleus and to form massive black holes are reviewed. Low-luminosity AGN can be fueled easily from the local star clusters, near the nucleus, and the various stellar processes are…
Context. Via scaling relations, it is well-known that active galactic nuclei (AGN) and bulges are linked. This link was thought to be driven by mergers, but recent studies show that secular processes are the dominant mechanism of…
Although more than two-thirds of star-forming disk galaxies in the local universe are barred, some galaxies remain un-barred, occupying the upper half of the Hubble tuning fork diagram. Numerical simulations almost always produce bars…
We investigate the stellar population properties of pseudo-bulges in barred galaxies drawn from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS DR7) to assess how bars regulate central star formation and secular evolution. Our sample comprises barred…
It is now a well established fact that galaxies undergo significant morphological transformation during their lifetimes, manifesting as an evolution along the Hubble sequence from the late to the early Hubble types. The physical processes…
In the current galaxy formation scenarios, two physical phenomena are invoked to build disk galaxies: hierarchical mergers and more quiescent external gas accretion, coming from intergalactic filaments. Although both are thought to play a…
Barred galaxies often develop a box/peanut pseudobulge, but they can also host a nearly spherical classical bulge, which is known to gain rotation due to the bar. We aim to explore how the presence of gas impacts the rotation of classical…
We computed the chemical evolution of Seyfert galaxies, residing in spiral bulges, based on an updated model for the Milky Way bulge with updated calculations of the Galactic potential and of the feedback from the central supermassive black…
We investigate possible environmental and morphological trends in the $z\sim0$ bar fraction using two carefully selected samples representative of a low-density environment (the isolated galaxies from the AMIGA sample) and of a dense…
Recent observational and theoretical studies have suggested that supermassive black holes (SMBHs) grow mostly through non-merger (`secular') processes. Since galaxy mergers lead to dynamical bulge growth, the only way to observationally…
A large fraction of barred galaxies host secondary bars that are embedded in their large-scale primary counterparts. These are common also in gas poor early-type barred galaxies. The evolution of such double-barred galaxies is still not…
We present new constraints on the ratio of black hole (BH) mass to total galaxy stellar mass at 0.3<z<0.9 for a sample of 32 type-1 active galactic nuclei (AGNs) from the XMM-COSMOS survey covering the range M_BH/M_sun~10^(7.2--8.7). Virial…
The details of bulge formation via collapse, mergers, secular processes or their interplay remain unresolved. To start answering this question and quantify the importance of distinct mechanisms, we mapped a sample of three galactic bulges…
It is widely accepted that within the framework of LCDM a significant fraction of giant-disk galaxies has recently experienced a violent galactic merger. We present numerical simulations of such major mergers of gas-rich pure disk galaxies,…