Related papers: A 6-d View of Stellar Shells
Galaxies are complex systems the evolution of which apparently results from the interplay of dynamics, star formation, chemical enrichment, and feedback from supernova explosions and supermassive black holes. The hierarchical theory of…
Criteria for gravitational collapse of expanding shells in rotating, shearing galaxy disks were determined using three-dimensional numerical simulations in the thin shell approximation. The simulations were run over a grid of 7 independent…
How do galaxies move relative to one another? While we can examine the motion of dark matter subhalos around their hosts in simulations of structure formation, determining the orbits of satellites around their parent galaxies from…
In the $\Lambda$CDM paradigm, stellar halos form through the accretion and disruption of satellite galaxies. We introduce new semi-analytic modeling within the SatGen framework to track the ex-situ stellar components of Milky Way--like…
The formation of galaxies can be understood in terms of the assembly patterns of each type of galactic component. To perform this kind of analysis, is necessary to define some criteria to separate those components. Decomposition methods…
Observations reveal a striking diversity in dwarf galaxy structures, spanning a wide range of masses, inner density slopes, shapes, and sizes. Tidal stripping may play a crucial role in shaping the evolution of these galaxies, yet the…
We follow the evolution of disk galaxies within a cluster that forms hierarchically in a cold dark matter N-body simulation. At a redshift z=0.5 we select several dark matter halos that have quiet merger histories and are about to enter the…
Deep photometric surveys of the Milky Way have revealed diffuse structures encircling our Galaxy far beyond the "classical" limits of the stellar disk. This paper reviews results from our own and other observational programs, which together…
Using the stellar photometry catalogue based on the latest data release (DR4) of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), a study of the Galactic structure using star counts is carried out for selected areas of the sky. The sample areas are…
The stellar debris structures that have been discovered around the Milky Way and other galaxies are thought to be formed from the disruption of satellite stellar systems --- dwarf galaxies or globular clusters --- by galactic tidal fields.…
We study numerically the formation of dSph galaxies. Intense star bursts, e.g. in gas-rich environments, typically produce a few to a few hundred young star clusters, within a region of just a few hundred pc. The dynamical evolution of…
We present six simulations of galactic stellar haloes formed by the tidal disruption of accreted dwarf galaxies in a fully cosmological setting. Our model is based on the Aquarius project, a suite of high resolution N-body simulations of…
Thin halo star streams originate from the evaporation of globular clusters and therefore provide information about the early epoch globular cluster population. The observed tidal tails from halo globular clusters in the Milky Way are much…
The rapidly improving quality and resolution of both low surface brightness observations and cosmological simulations of galaxies enables one to address the important question how the formation history is imprinted in the outer, unrelaxed…
Hierarchical structure formation theory is based on the notion that mergers drive galaxy evolution, so a considerable framework of semi-analytic models and N-body simulations has been constructed to calculate how mergers transform a growing…
We identify shell-like tidal structures in flattened haloes that appear stream-like under different projections. This projection dependence demonstrates how changes in the host halo directly impact the formation and classification of tidal…
The present day chemical and dynamical properties of the Milky Way bear the imprint of the Galaxy's formation and evolutionary history. One of the most enduring and critical debates surrounding Galactic evolution is that regarding the…
In this contribution we discuss the expected properties of our halo if our Galaxy had been built from mergers of smaller systems. Using both analytic arguments and high-resolution simulations, we find that the Galactic halo in the Solar…
Stellar halos are the only major stellar component of disk galaxies that lack systematic observational characterization, yet they encode critical information about galaxy merger histories. We present the first systematic census of stellar…
More and more observations indicate that young star clusters could retain imprints of their formation process. In particular, the degree of substructuring and rotation are possibly the direct result of the collapse of the parent molecular…