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Present-day disc galaxies often exhibit distinct thin and thick discs. The formation mechanisms of the two discs and the timing of their onset remain open questions. To address these questions, we select edge-on galaxies from flagship JWST…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2025-04-11 Takafumi Tsukui , Emily Wisnioski , Joss Bland-Hawthorn , Ken Freeman

Our Galaxy is a barred spiral. Recent work based on the COBE NIR data implies a small bulge-bar and a disk with a short scale-length. The corotation radius of the bar is in the range 3-4.5 kpc. The stellar density distribution beyond the…

Astrophysics · Physics 2007-05-23 Ortwin E. Gerhard

We investigate the properties of a galaxy similar to the Milky Way within the context of standard disk formation theory in a LCDM universe. Using the standard assumption that baryons conserve specific angular momentum when they collapse, we…

Astrophysics · Physics 2007-05-23 Rachel S. Somerville

Although thick disk is a structure prevalent in local disk galaxies and also present in our home Galaxy, its formation and evolution is still unclear. Whether the thick disk is born thick and/or gradually heated to be thick after formation…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2023-12-13 Jianhui Lian , Li Luo

The origin of S0 galaxies is discussed in the framework of early mergers in a Cold Dark Matter cosmology, and in a scenario where S0s are assumed to be former spirals stripped of gas. From an analysis of 127 early-type disk galaxies…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2009-11-13 E. Laurikainen , H. Salo , R. Buta , J. H. Knapen

The Milky Way (MW) galaxy is in focus, thanks to new observational data. Here we shed new light on the MW's past by studying the structural evolution of MW progenitors, which we identify from extragalactic surveys. Specifically, we…

We study the formation of chemical sequences in the stellar disc of Milky Way (MW)-mass galaxies in a full cosmological context with the auriga simulations. We focus on the conditions giving rise to bi-modal $\alpha$-chemistry in the MW…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2025-12-24 Matthew D. A. Orkney , Chervin F. P. Laporte , Robert J. J. Grand , Volker Springel

We investigate the stability of Milky Way analogs (MWAs) in the \texttt{TNG50} simulation against the growth of local axisymmetric instabilities, tracing their evolution from cosmic noon ($z=2.5$) to the present day ($z=0$). Using a…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2026-01-28 K. Aditya , Sandeep Kataria

Evidence from a variety of sources points towards the existence of a bar in the central few kpc of the Galaxy. The measurements roughly agree on the direction of the bar major axis, but other parameters (axis ratio, size, pattern speed) are…

Astrophysics · Physics 2008-02-03 Konrad Kuijken

The gas dynamics in the Galactic disc is modeled by releasing an initially axisymmetric SPH component in a completely self-consistent and symmetry-free 3D N-body simulation of the Milky Way in which the stellar components display a…

Astrophysics · Physics 2007-05-23 R. Fux

We analyse a sample of 52,000 Milky Way (MW) type galaxies drawn from the publicly available galaxy catalogue of the Millennium Simulation with the aim of studying statistically the differences and similarities of their properties in…

High redshift disc galaxies are more gas rich, clumpier, and more turbulent than local Universe galaxies. This early era of galaxy formation imprints the distribution and kinematics of the stars that we observe today, but it is not yet well…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2022-03-30 Floor van Donkelaar , Oscar Agertz , Florent Renaud

We have done a detailed study on the structural and kinematical properties of lenticular and early- and late-type spiral galaxies with bars, aiming to explore the formation and evolution processes of stellar bars in galaxies, and their…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-11-10 Dimitri Alexei Gadotti

We investigate possible environmental and morphological trends in the $z\sim0$ bar fraction using two carefully selected samples representative of a low-density environment (the isolated galaxies from the AMIGA sample) and of a dense…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2011-11-08 Lea Giordano , Kim-Vy H. Tran , Ben Moore , Amelie Saintonge

We study the evolution of Milky Way thick and thin discs in the light of the most recent observational data. In particular, we analyze abundance gradients of O, N, Fe and Mg along the thin disc as well as the [Mg/Fe] vs. [Fe/H] relations…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2020-09-10 Marco Palla , Francesca Matteucci , Emanuele Spitoni , Fiorenzo Vincenzo , Valeria Grisoni

The Milky Way and the Local Sheet form a peculiar galaxy system in terms of the unusually low velocity dispersion in our neighbourhood and the seemingly high mass of the Milky Way for such an environment. Using the TNG300 simulation we…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2023-01-04 M. A. Aragon-Calvo , Joseph Silk , Mark Neyrinck

We derive the metallicity profile of the Milky Way low-$\alpha$ disc population from 2 to 20 kpc from the Galactic centre in 1 Gyr age bins using the astroNN catalogue, and show that it is highly structured, with a plateau between 4 and 7…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2024-10-09 Misha Haywood , Sergey Khoperskov , Valeria Cerqui , Paola Di Matteo , David Katz , Owain Snaith

In cold dark matter cosmology, the baryonic components of galaxies are thought to be mixed with and embedded in non-baryonic and non-relativistic dark matter, which dominates the total mass of the galaxy and its dark matter halo. In the…

From this vast subject, I will pick out and review three specific topics, namely the formation and evolution of bars, the formation of bulges, and the evolution during multiple major mergers. Bars form naturally in galactic discs. Their…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-11-13 E. Athanassoula

Observations show a clear vertical metallicity gradient in the Galactic bulge, which is often taken as a signature of dissipative processes in the formation of a classical bulge. Various evidence shows, however, that the Milky Way is a…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2015-06-12 Inma Martinez-Valpuesta , Ortwin Gerhard