Related papers: The merger-driven evolution of massive early-type …
I discuss the chemical and spectrophotometric evolution of galaxies over cosmological timescales and present a first attempt to treat both aspects in a chemically consistent way. In our evolutionary synthesis approach, we account for the…
The merger history of a galaxy is thought to be one of the major factors determining its internal dynamics, with galaxies having undergone different types or mergers (e.g. dry, minor or major mergers) predicted to show different dynamical…
We present unified chemical and spectrophotometric evolutionary synthesis models that allow to describe composite stellar populations in a chemically consistent way. Keeping track of the ISM abundance at birth of each star and using sets of…
Analytical models of chemical evolution, including inflow and outflow of gas, are important tools to study how the metal content in galaxies evolves as a function of time. In this work, we present new analytical solutions for the evolution…
I set the stage for discussion of the stellar populations in interacting galaxies by looking back over the slow development of our understanding of these systems. From early anecdotal collections, to systematic cataloging, and finally to…
In models of galaxy formation in a hierarchical Universe, elliptical galaxies form through the merging of smaller disk systems. These models yield a number of testable predictions if reliable techniques for determining the relative ages and…
We provide observational evidence that galaxy mergers significantly affect stellar kinematics of early-type galaxies (ETGs) such as specific stellar angular momentum within the half-light radius ($\lambda_{R_e}$) and kinematic misalignment…
While we observe a large amount of cold interstellar gas and dust in a subset of the early-type galaxy (ETG) population, the source of this material remains unclear. The two main, competing scenarios are external accretion of lower mass,…
Stellar halos in early-type galaxies (ETGs) are shaped by their accretion and merger histories. We use a sample of 1114 ETGs in the TNG100 simulation with stellar masses $10^{10.3}\leq M_{*}/M_\odot\leq 10^{12}$, selected at z=0 within the…
Once understood as the paradigm of passively evolving objects, the discovery that massive galaxies experienced an enormous structural evolution in the last ten billion years has opened an active line of research. The most significant…
This work studies the relation between gas-phase oxygen abundance and stellar-to-gas fraction in nearby galaxies. We first derive the theoretical prediction, and argue that this relation is fundamental, in the sense that it must be verified…
Star clusters are fundamental building blocks of galaxies. Their formation is related to the density and pressure in progenitor molecular clouds and their environmental conditions. To understand better the dynamical processes driving star…
[abridged] Massive, passively evolving galaxies at redshifts z>1 exhibit on the average physical sizes smaller by factors ~3 than local early type galaxies (ETGs) endowed with the same stellar mass. Small sizes are in fact expected on…
We present a new analysis of the rest-frame B-band COMBO-17 and DEEP2 luminosity functions (LFs) of early-type galaxies (ETGs) as a function of luminosity and mass. Our aim is to place new stringent constraints on the evolution of ETGs…
The evolution of the metal content of galaxies and its relations to other global properties [such as total stellar mass (M*), circular velocity, star formation rate (SFR), halo mass, etc.] provides important constraints on models of galaxy…
I review the basic concepts for the spectrophotometric and chemical evolution of galaxies, contrast various approaches and discuss their respective advantages and shortcomings, both for the interpretation of nearby and high redshift…
Early-type galaxies (ETGs) are known to be enhanced in alpha elements, in accordance with their old ages and short formation timescales. In this contribution we aim to resolve the enrichment histories of ETGs. This means we study the…
In search for a synthetic understanding, a scenario for the evolution of the star formation rate and the chemical abundances in galaxies is proposed, combining gas infall from galactic halos, outflow of gas by supernova explosions, and an…
Galaxies are found to obey scaling relations between a number of observables. These relations follow different trends at the low- and the high-mass ends. The processes driving the curvature of scaling relations remain uncertain. In this…
The predictions of the multiple burst accretion model of chemical evolution are compared to the observations of the stellar masses and metallicities of star-forming galaxies. With the addition of one parameter, the model can account for the…