Related papers: The Evolution of the Star-forming Interstellar Med…
This paper presents a review of the topic of galaxy formation and evolution, focusing on basic features of galaxies, and how these observables reveal how galaxies and their stars assemble over cosmic time. I give an overview of the observed…
Observations show that star formation in galaxies is closely correlated with the abundance of molecular hydrogen. Modeling this empirical relation from first principles proves challenging, however, and many questions regarding its…
Star formation depends on the available gaseous "fuel" as well as galactic environment, with higher specific star formation rates where gas is predominantly molecular and where stellar (and dark matter) densities are higher. The partition…
We present the first results of a detailed modeling of chemical and photometric evolution of galaxies including the effects of a dusty interstellar medium. A chemical evolution code follows the SF rate, the gas fraction and the metallicity,…
Substantial numbers of morphologically regular early-type (elliptical and lenticular) galaxies contain molecular gas, and the quantities of gas are probably sufficient to explain recent estimates of the current level of star formation…
In this contribution, I present a simplified overview of the evolution of the disk galaxy population since z=1, and a brief discussion of a few open questions. Galaxy evolution surveys have found that the disk galaxy population forms stars…
We combine IRAM Plateau de Bure Interferometer and Herschel PACS and SPIRE measurements to study the dust and gas contents of high-redshift star forming galaxies. We present new observations for a sample of 17 lensed galaxies at z=1.4-3.1,…
Empirical star formation laws from the last 20 years are reviewed with a comparison to simulations. The current form in main galaxy disks has a linear relationship between the star formation rate per unit area and the molecular cloud mass…
We discuss how the conditions at high redshift differ from those at low redshift, and what the impact is on the galaxy population. We focus in particular on the role of gaseous dissipation and its impact on sustaining high star formation…
Using a compilation of measurements of the stellar mass density as a function of redshift we can infer the cosmic star formation history. For z < 0.7 there is good agreement between the two star formation histories. At higher redshifts the…
The apparent correlation between the specific star formation rate (sSFR) and total stellar mass (M_star) of galaxies is a fundamental relationship indicating how they formed their stellar populations. To attempt to understand this relation,…
The cold interstellar medium (ISM) plays a central role in the galaxy evolution process. It is the reservoir that fuels galaxy growth via star formation, the repository of material formed by these stars, and a sensitive tracer of internal…
Local starbursts have a higher efficiency of converting gas into stars, as compared to typical star-forming galaxies at a given stellar mass, possibly indicative of different modes of star formation. With the peak epoch of galaxy formation…
A brief review concludes that there is now good overall agreement between theoretical estimates of the energy associated with the production of the observed metal content of the Universe and the observed extragalactic background light. In…
I review some recent results about the molecular content of galaxies, obtained essentially from the CO lines, but also dense tracers, or the dust continuum emission. New results have been obtained on molecular cloud physics, and their…
Star clusters stand at the intersection of much of modern astrophysics: the interstellar medium, gravitational dynamics, stellar evolution, and cosmology. Here we review observations and theoretical models for the formation, evolution, and…
We combine the recent determination of the evolution of the cosmic density of molecular gas (H_2) using deep, volumetric surveys, with previous estimates of the cosmic density of stellar mass, star formation rate and atomic gas (HI), to…
We present a new method of tracking and characterizing the environment in which galaxies and their associated circumgalactic medium evolve. We use a structure finding algorithm we developed to self-consistently parse and follow the…
Following the first pioneering efforts in the 1990s that have focused on the detection of the molecular interstellar medium in high redshift galaxies, recent years have brought great advances in our understanding of the actual physical…
Stars and star clusters form by gravoturbulent fragmentation of interstellar gas clouds. The supersonic turbulence ubiquitously observed in Galactic molecular gas generates strong density fluctuations with gravity taking over in the densest…