Related papers: A 6-d View of Stellar Shells
Stellar mergers and common-envelope evolution are fast (dynamical-timescale) interactions in binary stars that drastically alter their evolution. They are key to understanding a plethora of astrophysical phenomena. Stellar mergers are…
The hydrodynamics of collisions and mergers of main-sequence stars is discussed in the light of recent 3-D calculations using the smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) method. Theoretical models for the formation of blue stragglers are…
Dwarf spheroidal (dSph) galaxies are considered the basic building blocks of the galaxy formation process in the LCDM (Lambda Cold Dark Matter) hierarchical cosmological model. These galaxies are believed to be the most dark matter (DM)…
The outer disk of the Milky Way Galaxy is warped and flared. Several mechanisms have been proposed to explain these phenomena, but none have quantitatively reproduced both features. Recent work has demonstrated that the Galactic stellar…
We use galaxy and dark halo data from the public database for the Millennium Simulation to study the growth of galaxies in the De Lucia et al. (2006) model for galaxy formation. Previous work has shown this model to reproduce many aspects…
Stellar clusters are critical constituents within galaxies: they are the result of highest-density star formation, and through their spatially and temporally correlated feedback they regulate their host galaxy evolution. We present a novel…
Determining how galaxies accumulate stellar mass is paramount to understanding the Universe. Two primary mechanisms drive this process: star-formation (SF) & mergers. Our understanding of star formation, and to some degree the processes…
Satellite galaxies in galaxy clusters represent a significant fraction of the global galaxy population. Because of the unusual dense environment of clusters, their evolution is driven by different mechanisms than the ones affecting field or…
The clustered nature of star formation should produce a high degree of structure in the combined phase and chemical space in the Galactic disk. To date, observed structure of this kind has been mostly limited to bound clusters and moving…
Spectral synthesis is basically the decomposition of an observed spectrum in terms of the superposition of a base of simple stellar populations of various ages and metallicities, producing as output the star formation and chemical histories…
Correlations between stellar kinematics and chemical abundances are fossil evidence for evolutionary connections between Galactic structural components. Extensive stellar surveys show that the only tolerably clear distinction between…
We investigate the properties and evolution of star particles in two simulations of isolated spiral galaxies, and two galaxies from cosmological simulations. Unlike previous numerical work, where typically each star particle represents one…
Stars grazing supermassive black holes on bound orbits may produce periodic flares over many passages, known as repeating partial tidal disruption events (TDEs). Here, we present 3D hydrodynamic simulations of sun-like stars over multiple…
In the $\Lambda$CDM model of structure formation, a stellar spheroid grows by the assembly of smaller galaxies, the so-called building blocks. Combining the Munich-Groningen semi-analytical model of galaxy formation with the high resolution…
Tidal debris around galaxies can yield important clues on their evolution. We have identified tidal debris in 11 early type galaxies (T \leq 0) from a sample of 65 early types drawn from the Spitzer Survey of Stellar Structure in Galaxies…
We study the shape and evolution of the star formation main sequence in three independently developed semi-analytic models of galaxy formation. We focus, in particular, on the characterization of the model galaxies that are significantly…
By using direct N-body numerical simulations, we model the dynamical co-evolution of two supermassive black holes (SMBHs) and the surrounding stars in merging galaxies. In order to investigate how different stellar components evolve during…
We review recent work that investigates the formation of stellar clusters, ranging in scale from globular clusters through open clusters to the small scale aggregates of stars observed in T associations. In all cases, recent advances in…
The formation of galactic discs and the efficiency of star formation within them are issues central to our understanding of galaxy formation. We have developed a detailed and versatile model of disc formation which combines the strengths of…
Molecular clouds at very high latitudes ($b > 60^o$) away from the Galactic plane are considered rare and not conventional sites of star formation. Contrary to this, the recent discovery of high latitude embedded Clusters can possibly…