Related papers: The Thick Disk-Halo Interface
A new view on our Galaxy has recently emerged, with large consequences on its formation scenarios. Not only new dwarf satellites have been detected, still orbiting and tidally disrupting, but also a multitude of stellar streams or tidal…
The present day chemical and dynamical properties of the Milky Way bear the imprint of the Galaxy's formation and evolutionary history. One of the most enduring and critical debates surrounding Galactic evolution is that regarding the…
The Milky Way serves as a template for understanding the formation and evolution of late-type massive disk galaxies since we can obtain detailed chemical and kinematic information for large samples of individual stars. However, the early…
The study of the Milky Way stellar discs in the context of galaxy formation is discussed. In particular we explore the properties of the Milky Way disc using a new sample of about 550 dwarf stars for which we have recently obtained…
It is widely believed that star clusters form with low star formation efficiencies. With the onset of stellar winds by massive stars or finally when the first super nova blows off, the residual gas is driven out of the embedded star…
Ever since a thick disk was proposed to explain the vertical distribution of the Milky Way disk stars, its origin has been a recurrent question. We aim to answer this question by inspecting 19 disk galaxies with stellar mass greater than…
This paper explores the mapping between the observable properties of a stellar halo in phase- and abundance-space and the parent galaxy's accretion history in terms of the characteristic epoch of accretion and mass and orbits of progenitor…
The prevailing model of galaxy formation proposes that galaxies like the Milky Way are built through a series of mergers with smaller galaxies over time. However, the exact details of the Milky Way's assembly history remain uncertain. In…
Knowledge of ages for stars formed over a galaxy's lifetime is fundamental to understand its formation and evolution. However, stellar ages are difficult to obtain since they cannot be measured from observations, being comparison with…
We have derived the star formation history of the Milky Way disk over the last 2 Gyr from the age distribution diagram of a large sample of open clusters comprising more than 580 objects. By interpreting the age distribution diagram using…
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…
A chromospheric age distribution of 552 late-type dwarfs is transformed into a star formation history by the application of scale height corrections, stellar evolutionary corrections and volume corrections. We show that the disk of our…
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…
A crucial question in galaxy formation is what role new accretion has in star formation. Theoretical models have predicted a wide range of correlation strengths between halo accretion and galaxy star formation. Previously, we presented a…
We present a brief discussion of the evolution of disk galaxy stellar masses, sizes, rotation velocities, and star formation rates over the last eight billion years. Recent observations have failed to detect significant evolution in the…
I review the results of recent cosmological simulations of galaxy formation that highlight the importance of satellite accretion in the formation of galactic disks. Tidal debris of disrupted satellites may contribute to the disk component…
I review observational studies of the large-scale star formation process in nearby galaxies. A wealth of new multi-wavelength data provide an unprecedented view on the interplay of the interstellar medium and (young) stellar populations on…
We use FIRE simulations to study disk formation in z~0, Milky Way-mass galaxies, and conclude that a key ingredient for the formation of thin stellar disks is the ability for accreting gas to develop an aligned angular momentum distribution…
We analyse the chemical properties of a set of solar vicinity stars, and show that the small dispersion in abundances of \alpha-elements at all ages provides evidence that the SFH has been uniform throughout the thick disk. In the context…
In chemodynamical evolution models it is usually assumed that the Milky Way galaxy forms from the inside-out implying that gas inflows onto the disk decrease with galactocentric distance. Similarly, to reproduce differences between chemical…