Related papers: Baryon Cycles in the Biggest Galaxies
In the hierarchical scenario of structure formation, galaxy clusters are the ultimate virialised products in mass and time. Hot baryons in the intracluster medium (ICM) and cold baryons in galaxies inhabit a dark matter dominated halo.…
Properties of normal galactic star formation, including the density dependence, threshold density, turbulent scaling relations, and clustering properties, are applied to the formation of galactic bulges. One important difference is that the…
For most of their lives, galaxies are surrounded by large and massive coronae of hot gas, which constitute vast reservoirs for gas accretion. This Chapter describes a mechanism that allows star-forming disc galaxies to extract gas from…
Recent analysis of the Milky Way's satellite galaxies reveals that these objects share a common central mass density, even though their luminosities range over five orders of magnitude. This observation can be understood in the context of…
Accretion disks around active galactic nuclei are potentially unstable to star formation at large radii. We note that when the compact objects formed from some of these stars spiral into the central supermassive black hole, there is no…
A massive black hole resides in the center of most, perhaps all galaxies. The one in the center of our home galaxy, the Milky Way, provides a uniquely accessible laboratory for studying in detail the connections and interactions between a…
Galaxies accrete their mass by means of both smooth accretion from the cosmic web, and the mergers of smaller entities. We wish to quantify the respective role of these two modes of accretion, which could determine the morphological types…
Supermassive Black Holes grow at the center of galaxies in consonance with them. In this review we discuss the mass feeding mechanisms that lead to this growth in Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN), focusing on constraints derived from…
We study the formation of galaxies by using $N$-body/hydrodynamics simulations to investigate how baryons collect at the centre of dark matter halos. We treat the dark matter as a collisionless fluid and the baryons as an ideal gas. We…
A new view on our Galaxy has recently emerged, with large consequences on its formation scenarios. Not only new dwarf satellites have been detected, still orbiting and tidally disrupting, but also a multitude of stellar streams or tidal…
Recent X-ray observations of intense high-speed outflows in quasars suggest that supercritical accretion on to the central black hole may have an important effect on a host galaxy. I revisit some ideas of Silk and Rees, and assume such…
The observed Tully-Fisher and Faber-Jackson laws between the baryonic mass of galaxies and the velocity of motion of stars at the edge of galaxies are explained within the framework of the model of accretion of galaxies around supermassive…
Star formation in galaxies relies on the availability of cold, dense gas, which, in turn, relies on factors internal and external to the galaxies. In order to provide a simple model for how star formation is regulated by various physical…
We use three-dimensional high-resolution adaptive-mesh-refinement simulations to investigate if mechanical feedback from active galactic nucleus jets can halt a massive cooling flow in a galaxy cluster and give rise to a self-regulated…
This paper discusses how cosmic gas accretion controls star formation, and summarizes the physical properties expected for the cosmic gas accreted by galaxies. The paper also collects observational evidence for gas accretion sustaining star…
Black holes at the centers of the galaxies grow mainly by the processes of accretion, mergers, and consumption of stars. In the case of gas accretion with cooling sources, the flow is momentum driven, after which the black hole reaches a…
Understanding the processes that drive galaxy formation and shape the observed properties of galaxies is one of the most interesting and challenging frontier problems of modern astrophysics. We now know that the evolution of galaxies is…
Central cluster galaxies (cDs) in cooling flows are growing rapidly through gas accretion and star formation. At the same time, AGN outbursts fueled by accretion onto supermassive black holes are generating X-ray cavity systems and driving…
Observations show the presence, in the halo of our Galaxy, of stars moving at velocities so high to require an acceleration mechanism involving the presence of a massive central black hole. Thus, in the frame of a galaxy hosting a…
If supermassive black holes in centres of galaxies form by merging of black-hole remnants of massive Population III stars, then there should be a few black holes of mass one or two orders of magnitude smaller than that of the central ones,…