Related papers: Why does the Milky Way have a metallicity floor?
Small stellar systems like dwarf galaxies are suggested to be the main building blocks of our Galaxy by numerical simulations in Lambda CDM models. The existence of star streams like Sagittarius tidal stream indicates that dwarf galaxies…
There is overwhelming evidence that the Milky Way has formed its stars at a rel- atively constant rate throughout the Hubble time. This implies that its stock of cold gas was not in place since the beginning but it has been acquired slowly…
We present a new chemical evolution model for the Galaxy that assumes three main infall episodes of primordial gas for the formation of halo, thick and thin disk, respectively. We compare our results with selected data taking into account…
The Milky Way dark matter halo is formed from the accretion of smaller subhalos. These sub-units also harbor stars---typically old and metal-poor---that are deposited in the Galactic inner regions by disruption events. In this Letter, we…
The entire evolution of the Milky Way, including its mass-assembly and star-formation history, is imprinted onto the chemo-dynamical distribution function of its member stars, f(x, v, [X/H]), in the multi-dimensional phase space spanned by…
Disk galaxies like the Milky Way are expected to experience gas flows carrying matter toward their centers. This paper investigates the role of these radial gas flows in models of Galactic chemical evolution (GCE). We follow five different…
Observations of molecular clouds in metal-poor environments typically find that they have much higher star formation rates than one would expect based on their observed CO luminosities and the molecular gas masses that are inferred from…
Giant protoplanets formed by gravitational instability in the outer regions of circumstellar disks go through an early phase of quasi-static contraction during which radii are large and internal temperatures are low. The main source of…
The earliest phases of the chemical evolution of our Galaxy are analysed in the light of the recent VLT results (concerning abundance patterns in the most metal-poor stars of the Galactic halo) and of stellar nucleosynthesis calculations.…
We show that the winds identified with high-redshift low-mass galaxies may strongly affect the formation of stars in more massive galaxies that form later. With 3D realizations of a simple linear growth model we track gas shocking, metal…
We quantify the correlations between gas-phase and stellar metallicities and global properties of galaxies, such as stellar mass, halo mass, age and gas fraction, in the Evolution and Assembly of GaLaxies and their Environments (EAGLE)…
The cosmic microwave background and the cosmic expansion can be interpreted as evidence that the Universe underwent an extremely hot and dense phase about 14 Gyr ago. The nucleosynthesis computations tell us that the Universe emerged from…
Theoretical studies and current observations of the high-redshift intergalactic medium (IGM) indicate that at least two cosmic transitions occur by the time the universe reaches gas metallicities of about $10^{-3}$ of solar values. These…
The present-day chemical and dynamical properties of the Milky Way are signatures of the Galaxy's formation and evolution. Using a self consistent chemodynamical evolution code we examine these properties within the currently favoured…
The heavy element abundance profiles in galaxies place stringent constraint on galaxy growth and assembly history. Low-redshift galaxies generally have a negative metallicity gradient in their gas and stars. Such gradients are thought to be…
Both simulations and observations suggest that the disk assembly of galaxies is governed by the interplay between coplanar gas inflow, ex-planar gas outflow and in-situ star formation on the disk, known as the leaky accretion disk. This…
In the local Universe, globular clusters (GCs) with metallicities $[{\rm Fe}/{\rm H}]<-2.5$ are extremely rare. In this Letter, the close connection between GC formation and galaxy evolution is used to show that this GC metallicity `floor'…
In the primordial universe, low mass structures with virial temperatures less than 10$^{4}$ K were unable to cool by atomic line transitions, leading to a strong suppression of star formation. On the other hand, these "minihalos" were…
In our grid of multiphase chemical evolution models (Moll\'a & D\'iaz, 2005), star formation in the disk occurs in two steps: first, molecular gas forms, and then stars are created by cloud-cloud collisions or interactions of massive stars…
The chemical composition of the gas in galaxies versus cosmic time provides a very important tool for understanding galaxy evolution. Although there are many studies at high redshift, they are rather scarce at lower redshifts. However, low…