Related papers: The Evolution of Tidal Debris
The evolution of galaxies is driven strongly by dynamical processes including internal instabilities, tidal interactions and mergers. The cluster environment is a useful laboratory for studying these effects. I present recent results on…
Galactic collisions trigger a number of phenomena, such as transportation inward of gas from distances of up to kiloparsecs from the center of a galaxy to the nuclear region, fuelling a central starburst or nuclear activity. The inverse…
Galaxy evolution depends strongly on the environment. Dynamical interactions and subsequent evolution make galaxies more concentrated, with higher surface densities, and also trigger star-formation, which consumes the available cold gas.…
Interacting galaxies favor the formation of star clusters but are also suspected to affect their evolution through an intense and rapidly varying tidal field. Treating this complex behaviour remains out-of-reach of (semi-)analytical…
Advances on the formation and survival of the so-called Tidal Dwarf Galaxies (TDGs) are reviewed. The understanding on how objects of the mass of dwarf galaxies may form in debris of galactic collisions has recently benefited from the…
A review of gravitational and hydrodynamical processes during formation of clusters and evolution of galaxies is given. Early, at the advent of N-body computer simulations, the importance of tidal fields in galaxy encounters has been…
Gravitational interactions and mergers are shaping and reshaping galaxies throughout the observable universe. While observations of interacting galaxies at low redshifts yield detailed information about the processes at work, observations…
As a result of internal processes or environmental effects like ram-pressure stripping or collisions, galaxies lose a significant part of their stellar and gaseous content. Whereas the impact of such stripping on galaxy evolution has been…
The evolution of galaxies results from a combination of internal and external processes. The star formation is an internal process transforming cold and dense cores of molecular clouds to stars. It may be triggered internally by expanding…
Interacting galaxies are a natural arena for studies of non-equilibrium stellar dynamics, gas dynamics, and thermodynamics. Only galaxy formation itself is as deeply concerned with as many different aspects of dynamics, and the connection…
The high-density environment of galaxy clusters is ripe for collisional encounters of galaxies. While the large velocity dispersion of clusters was originally thought to preclude slow encounters, the infall of smaller groups into the…
How does the tidal debris of minor galaxy mergers contribute to structures in spiral galaxies or in the intergalactic medium? While major mergers are known to create structures such as tidal dwarf galaxies and star clusters within their…
Theories of how galaxies, the fundamental constituents of large-scale structure, form and evolve have undergone a dramatic paradigm shift in the last few decades. Earlier views were of rapid, early collapse and formation of basic…
Galaxy evolution reveals itself not only through the evolving properties of galaxies themselves but also through its impact on the surrounding environment. The intergalactic medium in particular holds a fossil record of past galaxy…
The present-day globular cluster populations of galaxies reflect the cumulative effects of billions of years of galaxy evolution via such processes as mergers, tidal stripping, accretion, and in some cases the partial or even complete…
Long tails and streams of stars are the most noticeable upshots of galaxy collisions. Their origin as gravitational, tidal, disturbances has however been recognized only less than fifty years ago and more than ten years after their first…
Nearly all of the initial angular momentum of the matter that goes into each forming star must somehow be removed or redistributed during the formation process. The possible transport mechanisms and the possible fates of the excess angular…
Astrophysical fluid bodies that orbit close to one another induce tidal distortions and flows that are subject to dissipative processes. The spin and orbital motions undergo a coupled evolution over astronomical timescales, which is…
We review the observational evidences for tidal dwarf galaxies, a class of small galaxies formed out of the tidal debris of collisions between massive galaxies. Tidal dwarfs are found far from the interacting parent galaxies, associated to…
A number of theoretical and simulation results on star and structure formation in galaxy interactions and mergers is reviewed, and recent hydrodynamic simulations are presented. The role of gravity torques and ISM turbulence in galaxy…