Related papers: Keeping it Cool: Much Orbit Migration, yet Little …
Gas accretion, hot ($\sim 10^6\,{\rm K}$) atmospheres, and a tilt between the rotation axes of the disc and the atmosphere are all common predictions of standard galaxy evolution theory for massive star-forming galaxies at low redshift.…
The existence of giant extrasolar planets on short-period orbits ("hot Jupiters") challenges planet formation theories because such planets are difficult to form close to the star. High-eccentricity migration is a leading explanation, in…
We describe the evolution of hot interstellar gas in a family of low luminosity elliptical galaxies all having $M_B = -20$ but with different degrees of flattening (E0, E2, and E6) caused by rotation. The interstellar gas is furnished by…
The observed radial and vertical metallicity distribution of old stars in the Milky Way disk provides a powerful constraint on the chemical enrichment and dynamical history of the disk. We present the radial metallicity gradient,…
We investigate the effect of star formation and diffuse photoelectric heating on the properties of giant molecular clouds (GMCs) formed in high resolution (~< 10 pc) global (~ 20 kpc) simulations of isolated Milky Way-type galaxy disks. The…
A parameterized model of the mass distribution within the Milky Way is fitted to the available observational constraints. The most important single parameter is the ratio of the scale length R_d* of the stellar disk to R0. The disk and…
We study the kinematics of the Galactic thin and thick disk populations using stars from the RAVE survey's second data release together with distance estimates from Breddels et al. (2009). The velocity distribution exhibits the expected…
Recent spectroscopic observations in the Milky Way suggest that the chemically defined thick disk (stars with high [alpha/Fe] ratios and thus old) has a significantly smaller scale-length than the thin disk. This is in apparent…
Planet migration originally refers to protoplanetary disks, which are more massive and dense than typical accretion disks in binary systems. We study planet migration in an accretion disk in a binary system consisting of a solar-like star…
From the analysis of the color-magnitude diagrams and color functions of four wide LMC fields located from ~2 to 6 kpc from the kinematic center of the LMC we present evidence that, while the oldest population is coeval in all fields, the…
We have investigated the possibilities to quantify how much stars move in the Milky Way stellar disk due to diffuse processes (i.e. so called blurring) and due to influences from spiral arms and the bar (i.e. so called churning). To this…
If the angular momentum of the molecular cloud core were conserved during the star formation process, a new-born star would rotate much faster than its fission speed. This constitutes the angular momentum problem of new-born stars. In this…
We review the current state of our knowledge concerning the rotation and angular momentum evolution of young stellar objects and brown dwarfs from a primarily observational view point. Periods are typically accurate to 1% and available for…
Star-forming galaxies like the Milky Way are surrounded by a hot gaseous halo at the virial temperature - the so-called galactic corona - that plays a fundamental role in their evolution. The interaction between the disc and the corona has…
Previous models of galactic disk heating in interactions invoke restrictive assumptions not necessarily valid in modern LCDM contexts: that satellites and orbits are rigid and circular, with slow decay over many orbital times from dynamical…
Previous studies based on the analysis of Gaia DR2 data have revealed that accreted stars, possibly originating from a single progenitor satellite, are a significant component of the halo of our Galaxy, potentially constituting most of the…
We employ an improved methodology to insert live stellar disks into high-resolution dark matter simulations of Milky Way sized halos, allowing us to investigate the fate of thin stellar disks in the tumultuous environment of cold dark…
Recent asteroseismic advances have allowed for direct measurements of the internal rotation rates of many sub-giant and red giant stars. Unlike the nearly rigidly rotating Sun, these evolved stars contain radiative cores that spin faster…
Cold debris disks trace the limits of planet formation or migration in the outer regions of planetary systems, and thus have the potential to answer many of the outstanding questions in wide-orbit planet formation and evolution. We…
Interstellar medium (ISM) structures gravitationally perturb stellar orbits in galactic disks, driving orbital heating and migration. However, studies of these transport processes tend to model the ISM very crudely, e.g., as a collection of…