Related papers: Evidence of a dynamically evolving Galactic warp
It is widely believed that star clusters form with low star formation efficiencies. With the onset of stellar winds by massive stars or finally when the first super nova blows off, the residual gas is driven out of the embedded star…
This chapter reviews theoretical work on the stellar dynamics of galaxy disks. All the known collective global instabilities are identified, and their mechanisms described in terms of local wave mechanics. A detailed discussion of warps and…
The Milky Way's stellar disk can tilt in response to torques that result from infalling satellite galaxies and their associated tidal debris. In this work, we explore the dynamics of disk tilting by running N-body simulations of mergers in…
We show that spiral waves in galaxy discs churn the stars and gas in a manner that largely preserves the overall angular momentum distribution and leads to little increase in random motion. Changes in the angular momenta of individual stars…
Spiral patterns are important agents of galaxy evolution. In this review, I describe how the redistribution of angular momentum by recurrent transient spiral patterns causes the random speeds of stars to rise over time, metallicity…
We compare the star-formation history and dynamics of the Milky Way (MW) with the properties of distant disk galaxies. During the first ~4 Gyr of its evolution, the MW formed stars with a high star-formation intensity (SFI), Sigma_SFR~0.6…
Orbital properties of stars, computed from their six-dimensional phase space measurements and an assumed Galactic potential, are used to understand the structure and evolution of the Galaxy. Stellar actions, computed from orbits, have the…
We analyse a sample of 52,000 Milky Way (MW) type galaxies drawn from the publicly available galaxy catalogue of the Millennium Simulation with the aim of studying statistically the differences and similarities of their properties in…
The process of galactic disc growing is still not fully understood. In the majority of disk galaxies the gas and stars are located in the same plane and rotate in the same direction. However, there are kinematically peculiar galaxies…
Over the past 10 Gyr, star-forming galaxies have changed dramatically, from clumpy and gas rich, to rather quiescent stellar-dominated disks with specific star formation rates lower by factors of a few tens. We present a general theoretical…
We show that the propagation of warps in gaseous disks can be strongly affected by compressional effects, when the thickness of the disk is taken into account. The physical reason is that, in realistic self-gravitating disks, the sound time…
In the standard model of structure formation, galaxies form in the centre of dark matter haloes that develop as a result of inhomogeneities in the primordial mass distribution of the Universe. Afterwards, galaxies grow by means of…
We explore the hypothesis that a passing satellite or dark matter subhalo has excited coherent oscillations of the Milky Way's stellar disk in the direction perpendicular to the Galactic midplane. This work is motivated by recent…
We construct a model for the Milky Way Galaxy composed of a stellar disc and bulge embedded in a dark-matter halo. All components are modelled as $N$-body systems with up to 8 billion equal-mass particles and integrated up to an age of…
With the start of the Gaia era, the time has come to address the major challenge of deriving the star formation history and evolution of the disk of our MilkyWay. Here we review our present knowledge of the outer regions of the Milky Way…
The Milky Way has distinct structural stellar components linked to its formation and subsequent evolution, but disentangling them is nontrivial. With the recent availability of high-quality data for a large numbers of stars in the Milky…
The distribution of gravitational torques and bar strengths in the local Universe is derived from a detailed study of 163 galaxies observed in the near-infrared. The results are compared with numerical models for spiral galaxy evolution. It…
We consider the most commonly occurring circumstances which apply to galaxies, namely membership in galaxy groups of about $10^{13}h^{-1} M_\odot$ total mass, and estimate the accompanying physical conditions of intergalactic medium (IGM)…
Flat rotation curves of spiral galaxies are considered as an evidence for dark matter, but the rotation curve of the Milky Way is difficult to measure. Various objects were used to track the rotation curve in the outer parts of the Galaxy,…
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…