Related papers: How Do Disk Galaxies Form?
We present "radially-resolved-equilibrium-models" for the growth of stellar and gaseous disks in cosmologically accreting massive halos. Our focus is on objects that evolve to redshifts $z\sim 2$. We solve the time-dependent equations that…
High resolution gravity plus smoothed particle hydrodynamics simulations are used to study the formation of galaxies within the context of hierarchical structure formation. The simulations have sufficient dynamic range to resolve from ten…
As they grow, galaxies can transition from irregular/spheroidal with 'bursty' star formation histories (SFHs), to disky with smooth SFHs. But even in simulations, the direct physical cause of such transitions remains unclear. We therefore…
Galaxies above redshift 1 can be very clumpy, with irregular morphologies dominated by star complexes as large as 2 kpc and as massive as a few 10^8 or 10^9 Mo. Their co-moving densities and rapid evolution suggest that most present-day…
We report first results from a series of N-body/gasdynamical simulations designed to study the origin of galaxy morphologies in a cold dark matter-dominated universe. The simulations include star formation and feedback and have numerical…
In this review I demonstrate that a realistic model for the formation of galaxy disks depends on a proper treatment of the gas in galaxies. Historically, cosmological simulations of disk galaxy formation have suffered from a lack of…
Galaxy disk formation must incorporate the multiphase nature of the interstellar medium. The resulting two-phase structure is generated and maintained by gravitational instability and supernova energy input, which yield a source of…
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 investigate the angular momentum evolution of four disk galaxies residing in Milky Way-sized halos formed in cosmological zoom-in simulations with various sub-grid physics and merging histories. We decompose these galaxies kinematically…
Using three fiducial Nbody+SPH simulations, we follow the merging of two disk galaxies with a hot gaseous halo component each, and examine whether the merger remnant can be a spiral galaxy. The stellar progenitor disks are destroyed by…
Galactic disk formation requires knowledge about the initial conditions under which disk galaxies form, the boundary conditions that affect their secular evolution and the micro-physical processes that drive the multi-phase interstellar…
Surveys of distant galaxies with the Hubble Space Telescope and from the ground have shown that there is only mild evolution in the relationship between radial size and stellar mass for galactic disks from z~1 to the present day. Using a…
We use FIRE-2 cosmological zoom-in hydrodynamic simulations to investigate the co-evolution between Milky Way-size galaxies and their host dark matter halos. We find that the formation of these galaxies follows a two-phase pattern, with an…
I follow a bar from its formation, via its evolution, to its destruction and, perhaps, regeneration. I discuss the main features at each stage and particularly the role of the halo. Bars can form even in sub-maximum discs. In fact, such…
Cold dark matter cosmogony predicts triaxial dark matter halos, whereas observations find quite round halos. This is most likely due to the condensation of baryons leading to rounder halos. We examine the halo phase space distribution basis…
Using a high-resolution cosmological numerical simulation, we have analyzed the evolution of galaxies at z~10 in a highly overdense region of the universe. These objects could represent the high redshift galaxies recently observed by the…
We study the evolution of the scaling relations between maximum circular velocity, stellar mass and optical half-light radius of star-forming disk-dominated galaxies in the context of LCDM-based galaxy formation models. Using data from the…
We extend our previous work focused at $z\sim0$, studying the redshift evolution of galaxy dynamical properties using the state-of-the-art semi-analytic model GAEA: we show that the predicted size-mass relation for disky/star forming and…
Many galaxies at high redshift have peculiar morphologies dominated by 10^8-10^9 Mo kpc-sized clumps. Using numerical simulations, we show that these "clump clusters" can result from fragmentation in gravitationally unstable primordial…
We present first results concerning the metallicities and stellar populations of galaxies formed in a cosmologically motivated simulation. The calculations include dark matter, gas dynamics, radiation processes, star formation, supernovae…