Related papers: Secular evolution of galactic discs: constraints o…
Simulations and observations of galactic bars suggest they do not commonly evolve into bulges, although it is possible that the earliest bars formed bulges long ago, when galaxies were smaller, denser, and had more gas. The most highly…
Establishing the relative role of internally and externally driven mechanisms responsible for disc and bulge growth is essential to understand the evolution of disc galaxies. In this context, we have studied the physical properties of disc…
A new idea is proposed for the origin of bulges in spiral galaxies. Numerical simulations for the protogalactic collapse suggest strongly that galactic bulges have been assembled from massive clumps formed in the galactic disks in their…
We present evidence of bar-induced secular evolution in galactic discs using 3.6 ${\mu m}$ images of nearby galaxies from the Spitzer Survey of Stellar Structure in Galaxies (S4G). We find that among massive galaxies ($M_{star}/M_{sun}>…
We present the results of a series of numerical simulations aimed to study the evolution of a disc galaxy within the global tidal field of a group environment. Both the disc galaxy and the group are modelled as multi-component,…
We study star formation rates (SFR) and stellar masses in bulges of nearby disk galaxies, using SFRs and stellar masses derived from Spitzer and GALEX data. At present day SFR the median pseudobulge could have grown the present day stellar…
We use simulations to study the growth of a pseudobulge in an isolated thin exponential stellar disc embedded in a static spherical halo. We observe a transition from later to earlier morphological types and an increase in bar prominence…
It is widely accepted that within the framework of LCDM a significant fraction of giant-disk galaxies has recently experienced a violent galactic merger. We present numerical simulations of such major mergers of gas-rich pure disk galaxies,…
We present a theoretical model for the evolution of mass, angular momentum and size of galaxy disks and bulges, and we implement it into the semi-analytic galaxy formation code SAGE. The model follows both secular and violent evolutionary…
Galaxy disks evolve through angular momentum transfers between sub-components, like gas, stars, or dark matter halos, through non axi-symmetric instabilities. The speed of this evolution is boosted in presence of a large fraction of cold…
In the past two decades, secular evolution has emerged as an important new paradigm for the formation and evolution of the Hubble sequence of galaxies. A new dynamical mechanism was identified through which density waves in galaxies, in the…
We address the effects of bar-driven secular evolution in discs by comparing their properties in a sample of nearly 700 unbarred and barred (42 +- 3 per cent of the population) massive disc galaxies (M* > 10^10 Msun). We make use of…
Secular evolution gradually shapes galaxies by internal processes, in contrast to early cosmological evolution which is more rapid. An important driver of secular evolution is the flow of gas from the disk into the central regions, often…
This paper introduces the idea that the general mixing inequality obeyed by evolving stellar phase densities may place useful constraints on the possible history of the over-all galaxy population. We construct simple models for the full…
We determine central values and radial trends in the stellar populations of the bulges of a sample of 28 edge-on S0-Sb disk galaxies, 22 of which are boxy/peanut-shaped (and therefore barred). Our principal findings are the following. (1)…
Spiral galaxies have most of their stellar mass in a large rotating disk, and only a modest fraction in a central spheroidal bulge. This poses a major challenge for cosmological models of galaxy formation. Galaxies form at the centre of…
We combine deep optical and IR photometry for 326 spiral galaxies from two recent galaxy samples and report that the surface brightness profiles of late-type spirals are best fit by two exponentials. Moreover, the ratio of bulge and disk…
This is the summary chapter of a review book on galaxy bulges. Bulge properties and formation histories are more varied than those of ellipticals. I emphasize two advances: 1 - "Classical bulges" are observationally indistinguishable from…
We seek to understand whether the stellar populations of galactic bulges show fingerprints of secular evolution triggered by the presence of the disc. For this purpose we re-analyse the sample of Proctor and Sansom, deriving stellar…
Most giant spiral galaxies have pseudo or disk-like bulges that are considered to be the result of purely secular processes. This may challenge the hierarchical scenario predicting about one major merger per massive galaxy ($>$$3\times…