Related papers: The Hierarchical Formation of the Galactic Disk
The star formation process in molecular clouds usually leads to the formation of multiple stellar systems, mostly binaries. Remaining disks around those stars may be located around individual stars (circumstellar disks) or around the entire…
The observations of bulge/disk segregation in the Universe are reviewed with a focus on whether the observed segregation in clusters is local or global, and whether there is bulge-disk segregation on large-scales. The high concentration of…
In the first paper we presented 27 hydrodynamical cosmological simulations of galaxies with total masses between $5 \times 10^8$ and $10^{10}\,\mathrm{M}_\odot$. In this second paper we use a subset of these cosmological simulations as…
Many Local Group dwarf spheroidal galaxies are found in the Galactic halo along great circles in the sky. Some of these stellar systems are thought to be the fragments of larger parent galaxies which have once intruded into and were torn…
Most stars in galactic disks are believed to be born as a member of star clusters or associations. Star clusters formed in disks are disrupted due to the tidal stripping and the evolution of star clusters themselves, and as a results new…
Thick disks are a prevalent feature observed in numerous disk galaxies including our own Milky Way. Their significance has been reported to vary widely, ranging from a few to 100% of the disk mass, depending on the galaxy and the…
Previous models of galactic disk heating in interactions invoke restrictive assumptions not necessarily valid in modern LCDM contexts: that satellites and orbits are rigid and circular, with slow decay over many orbital times from dynamical…
Geometrically thick disks may form after tidal disruption events, and rapid accretion may lead to short flares followed by long-term, lower-level emission. Using a novel accretion disk code which relies primarily on global conservation laws…
The Milky Way's stellar disk can tilt in response to torques that result from infalling satellite galaxies and their associated tidal debris. In this work, we explore the dynamics of disk tilting by running N-body simulations of mergers in…
In our hierarchical structure-formation paradigm, the observed morphological evolution of massive galaxies -- from rotationally-supported discs to dispersion-dominated spheroids -- is largely explained via galaxy merging. However, since…
Deep photometric surveys of the Milky Way have revealed diffuse structures encircling our Galaxy far beyond the "classical" limits of the stellar disk. This paper reviews results from our own and other observational programs, which together…
Circumstellar disks are an essential ingredient of the formation of low-mass stars. It is unclear, however, whether the accretion-disk paradigm can also account for the formation of stars more massive than about 10 solar masses, in which…
Disc galaxies show a large morphological diversity with varying contribution of three major structural components; thin discs, thick discs, and central bulges. Dominance of bulges increases with the galaxy mass (Hubble sequence) whereas…
Recent observations have suggested that circumstellar disks may commonly form around young stellar objects. Although the formation of circumstellar disks can be a natural result of the conservation of angular momentum in the parent cloud,…
The infall of a satellite galaxy onto a galactic disk generally brings in angular momentum that is not aligned with the axis of the disk. The main dynamical issues addressed are what fraction of the orbital angular momentum of the satellite…
Using the deepest and the most complete set of observations of distant galaxies, we investigate how extended disks could have formed. Observations include spatially-resolved kinematics, detailed morphologies and photometry from UV to…
Recent observational and theoretical work suggests that the formation of the Galactic stellar halo involved both dissipative processes and the accretion of subfragments. With present data, the fraction of the halo for which an accretion…
In this review I concentrate on three areas related to structure of disks in spiral galaxies. First I will review the work on structure, kinematics and dynamics of stellar disks. Next I will review the progress in the area of flaring of HI…
Observations suggest that the structural parameters of disk galaxies have not changed greatly since redshift 1. We examine whether these observations are consistent with a cosmology in which structures form hierarchically. We use SPH/N-body…
I discuss observations of magnitude residuals from the B-band Tully-Fisher relationship, B-V color, chemical abundance gradients, and asymmetries in the H I and stellar disks of nearby spiral galaxies within the context of a model in which…