Related papers: Why is the Galactic disk so cool?
The thickness of a galaxy's disk provides a valuable probe of its formation and evolution history. Observations of the Milky Way and local galaxies have revealed an ubiquitous disk structure with two distinctive components: an old thick…
Understanding radial migration is a crucial point to build relevant chemical and dynamical evolution models of the Milky Way disk. In this paper, we analyze a high-resolution N-body simulation of a Milky Way-type galaxy to study the role…
The direction of the spin vectors of disk galaxies change over time. We present the tilting rate of a sample of galaxies in the NIHAO suite of cosmological hydrodynamical simulations. Galaxies in our sample have been selected to be isolated…
We derive the evolution equations describing a thin axisymmetric disk of gas and stars with an arbitrary rotation curve that is kept in a state of marginal gravitational instability and energy equilibrium due to the balance between energy…
We examine the effects of stellar feedback and bursty star formation on low-mass galaxies ($M_{\rm star}=2\times10^6-5\times10^{10}{\rm M_{\odot}}$) using the FIRE (Feedback in Realistic Environments) simulations. While previous studies…
While planets in the solar system only have a low inclination with respect to the ecliptic there is mounting evidence that in extrasolar systems the inclination can be very high, at least for close-in planets. One process to alter the…
A substantial fraction of the baryons of disk galaxies like the Milky Way is expected to reside in coronae of gas at the virial temperature. This is the only realistic reservoir of gas available to feed star formation in the disks. The way…
The strength and direction of migration of low mass planets depends on the disc's thermodynamics. In discs where the viscous heating is balanced by radiative transport, the migration can be directed outwards, a process which extends the…
We use samples of local main-sequence stars to show that the radial gradient of [Fe/H] in the thin disk of the Milky Way decreases with mean effective stellar temperature. Many of these stars are visiting the solar neighborhood from the…
We develop a detailed model of the Milky Way (a ``prototypical'' disk galaxy) and extend it to other disks with the help of some simple scaling relations, obtained in the framework of Cold Dark Matter models. This phenomenological…
We study the vertical heating and thickening of galaxy disks due to accretion of small satellites. Our simulations are restricted to axial symmetry, which largely eliminates numerical evolution of the target galaxy but requires the…
The problem of dynamical heating of galactic discs by spiral density waves is discussed using the shearing sheet model. The secular evolution of the disc is described quantitatively by a diffusion equation for the distribution function of…
I discuss various proposed formation scenarios for the metal-poor components of the Milky Way Galaxy, emphasising the stellar halo and the thick disk. Interactions and accretion played a significant role in Galactic evolution, in particular…
Spiral galaxies offer a unique opportunity to study the role of star formation in galaxy evolution and to test various theoretical star formation schemes. I review some recent relevant work on the evolution of spiral galaxies. Detailed…
The Milky Way is often considered to be the best example of a spiral for which the dark matter not only dominates the outer kinematics, but also plays a major dynamical role in the inner galaxy: the Galactic disk is therefore said to be…
We present a phenomenological approach to the study of disk galaxy evolution, based on i) a detailed modelling of the Milky Way (used as a prototype disk galaxy) and ii) an extension of the model to other disks through some simple scaling…
The massive stars in the Galactic center inner arcsecond share analogous properties with the so-called Hot Jupiters. Most of these young stars have highly eccentric orbits, and were probably not formed in-situ. It has been proposed that…
The orbital angular momentum of individual stars in galactic discs can be permanently changed through torques from transient spiral patterns. Interactions at the corotation resonance dominate these changes and have the further property of…
The determination of the birth radius of the Sun is important to understand the evolution and consequent disruption of the Sun's birth cluster in the Galaxy. Motivated by this fact, we study the motion of the Sun in the Milky Way during the…
Disc non-axisymmetrc components, such as spirals and central bars, are nowadays known to play an important role in shaping galactic discs. Here we use Tree-SPH N-body simulations to examine the effect of these perturbers on two aspects: the…