Related papers: Formation and Cosmic Evolution of Elliptical Galax…
Elliptical galaxies formed in a major merger tend to become more nearly spherical with time, thanks to the gravitational effect of their central black hole (or black holes). Observational results indicate that elliptical galaxies with older…
We discuss the correlation between the dark matter content of elliptical galaxies and their ellipticities. We then explore a mechanism for which the correlation would emerge naturally. Such mechanism leads to identifying the dark matter…
After the discovery that supermassive black holes (SMBHs) are ubiquitous at the center of stellar spheroids and that their mass Mbh, in the range 10^6-10^9 Msun, is tightly related to global properties of the host stellar system, the idea…
We present preliminary results of an extensive study of the fundamental properties of dwarf elliptical galaxies (dEs) in the Coma cluster. Our study will combine HST surface photometry with ground-based UBRIJK photometry and optical…
The old dream of integrating into one the study of micro and macrocosmos is now a reality. Cosmology, astrophysics, and particle physics intersect in a scenario (but still not a theory) of cosmic structure formation and evolution called…
Here I present a review of the work done on the presence and effects of chaos in elliptical galaxies plus some recent results we obtained on this subject. The fact that important fractions of the orbits that arise in potentials adequate to…
The formation and evolution of elliptical galaxies (EGs) is still an open question. In particular, recent observations suggest that elliptical galaxies are not only simple spheroidal systems of old stars. In this paper we analyze a sample…
The distribution and kinematics of the molecular gas in elliptical galaxies give information on the origin and history of the gas and the rate of star formation activity in ellipticals. I describe some preliminary results of a survey which…
Elliptical galaxies are believed to consist of a single population of old stars formed together at an early epoch in the Universe, yet recent analyses of galaxy spectra seem to indicate the presence of significant younger populations of…
Cosmological simulations predict that early-type galaxies (ETGs) are the results of extended mass accretion histories. The latter are characterized by different numbers of mergers, mergers mass ratios and gas fractions, and timing.…
We explore the evolution of the cold gas (molecular and neutral hydrogen) of elliptical galaxies and merger remnants ordered into a time sequence on the basis of spectroscopic age estimates. We find that the fraction of cold gas in early…
In this series of lectures I discuss the basic principles and the modelling of the chemical evolution of galaxies. In particular, I present models for the chemical evolution of the Milky Way galaxy and compare them with the available…
I discuss the chemical and spectrophotometric evolution of galaxies over cosmological timescales and present a first attempt to treat both aspects in a chemically consistent way. In our evolutionary synthesis approach, we account for the…
(Abridged) A variety of formation scenarios was proposed to explain the diversity of properties observed in bulges. Studying their intrinsic shape can help in constraining the dominant mechanism at the epochs of their assembly. The…
We have studied a sample of 89 very isolated, elliptical galaxies at z < 0.08 and compared their properties with elliptical galaxies located in a high-density environment such as the Coma supercluster. Our aim is to probe the role of…
This work presents high $S/N$ spectroscopic observations of a representative sample of nearby elliptical galaxies. These observations provide a strong test of models for the formation of elliptical galaxies and their star formation…
This article reviews the prevailing paradigm for how galaxies and larger structures formed in the universe: gravitational instability. Basic observational facts are summarized to motivate the standard cosmological framework underlying most…
Galactic spheroids can form as a result of galaxy interactions and mergers of disks. Detailed analyses of the photometric properties, the intrinsic orbital structure, the line-of-sight velocity distributions and the kinemetry of simulated…
The formation of tidal dwarf galaxies (TDGs) is triggered by the encounters of already existing galaxies. Their existence is predicted from numerical calculations of encountering galaxies and is also well documented with observations. The…
In this paper we discuss the chemical evolution of elliptical galaxies and its consequences on the evolution of the intracluster medium (ICM). We use chemical evolution models taking into account dark matter halos and compare the results…