Related papers: Galaxy mergers can rapidly shut down star formatio…
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…
Giant elliptical galaxies, believed to be built from the merger of lesser galaxies, are known to house a massive black hole at their center rather than a compact star cluster. If low- and intermediate-mass galaxies do indeed partake in the…
Theoretical considerations and observational data support the idea that mergers were more frequent in the past. At high redshifts, violent interactions and mergers may be implicated in the origin of Lyman-break galaxies, sub-mm starbursts,…
Observations of distant bright quasars suggest that billion solar mass supermassive black holes (SMBHs) were already in place less than a billion years after the Big Bang. Models in which light black hole seeds form by the collapse of…
We use semi-analytic models and cosmological merger trees to provide the initial conditions for multi-merger numerical hydrodynamic simulations, and exploit these simulations to explore the effect of galaxy interaction and merging on star…
To address the problem concerning the early formation of stars in massive galaxies, we present the results of a semi-analytic model of galaxy formation which includes a physical description of starbursts triggered by galaxy interactions.…
We perform hydrodynamical simulations of neutron-star mergers for a large sample of temperature-dependent, nuclear equations of state, and determine the threshold mass above which the merger remnant promptly collapses to form a black hole.…
Galaxy mergers are a major evolutionary transformation whose effects are borne out by a plethora of observations and numerical simulations. However, most previous simulations have used idealised, isolated, binary mergers and there has not…
We use cosmological SPH simulations to study the effects of mergers in the star formation history of galactic objects in hierarchical clustering scenarios. We find that during some merger events, gaseous discs can experience two starbursts:…
In this work we carry out an analysis of star-formation and nuclear activity in the different stages during a galaxy merger identified in isolated systems (isolated galaxies, isolated pairs, and isolated triplets) using integral field…
We compare mass-selected close pairs at z > 1 with the intrinsic galaxy merger rate in the Illustris Simulations. To do so, we construct three 140 arcmin^2 lightcone catalogs and measure pair fractions, finding that they change little or…
According to the hierarchical model, small galaxies form first and merge together to form bigger objects. In parallel, galaxies assemble their mass through accretion from cosmic filaments. Recently, the increased spatial resolution of the…
A key unresolved question is the role that galaxy mergers play in driving stellar mass growth over cosmic time. Recent observational work hints at the possibility that the overall contribution of `major' mergers (mass ratios $\gtrsim$1:4)…
Clusters of galaxies generally form by the gravitational merger of smaller clusters and groups. Mergers drive shocks in the intracluster gas which heat the intracluster gas. Mergers disrupt cluster cooling cores. Mergers produce large,…
Galaxy mergers have been shown to trigger AGN in the nearby universe, but the timescale over which this process happens remains unconstrained. The Multi-Model Merger Identifier (MUMMI) machine vision pipeline has been demonstrated to…
Recent observations and hydrodynamical simulations of star formation inside a giant molecular cloud have revealed that, within a star forming region, stars do not form evenly distributed throughout this region, but rather in small…
Super-massive black holes, with masses larger than a million times that of the Sun, appear to inhabit the centers of all massive galaxies. Cosmologically-motivated theories of galaxy formation need feedback from these super-massive black…
We explore a model in which efficient star formation in galaxies is triggered by merging satellites. We show that the merger/interaction rates predicted by hierarchical galaxy formation models depend strongly on galaxy mass. If a merger of…
We study dynamical capture binary neutron star mergers as may arise in dense stellar regions such as globular clusters. Using general-relativistic hydrodynamics, we find that these mergers can result in the prompt collapse to a black hole…
Galaxy mergers are predicted to trigger accretion onto the central supermassive black holes, with the highest rates occurring during final coalescence. Previously, we have shown elevated rates of both optical and mid-IR selected active…