Related papers: The Galaxy in the cosmological context
Quantification of the Galaxy's star formation history involves both the duration and the rate of formation, with these parameters being known with different precision for different populations. The early rate of star formation is knowable…
The balance of evidence indicates that individual galaxies and groups or clusters of galaxies are embedded in enormous distributions of cold, weakly interacting dark matter. These dark matter 'halos' provide the scaffolding for all luminous…
Current theories of galaxy formation have tended to focus on hierarchical structure formation, which is the most likely scenario for cosmological models with lots of power at small scales (e.g. standard cold dark matter). Models with little…
The formation and evolution of a low mass galaxy in the gravitational field of a massive disk galaxy (like the Milky Way) has been studied. Numerical simulations of complex gas-dynamic flows are based on our own variant of the…
Over the past decade, empirical constraints on the galaxy-dark matter halo connection have significantly advanced our understanding of galaxy evolution. Past techniques have focused on connections between halo properties and galaxy stellar…
In the $\Lambda$-Cold Dark Matter model of the Universe, galaxies form in part through accreting satellite systems. Previous work have built an understanding of the signatures of these processes contained within galactic stellar halos. This…
Galaxies evolve under the influence of gas flows between their interstellar medium and their surrounding gaseous halos known as the circumgalactic medium (CGM). The CGM is a major reservoir of galactic baryons and metals, and plays a key…
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…
Galaxies form and evolve in the context of their local and large-scale environments. Their baryonic content that we observe with imaging and spectroscopy is intimately connected to the properties of their dark matter halos, and to their…
If we are to develop a comprehensive and predictive theory of galaxy formation and evolution, it is essential that we obtain an accurate assessment of how and when galaxies assemble their stellar populations, and how this assembly varies…
We present evidence to support an earlier indication that the Galaxy is embedded in an extended, highly inclined, triaxial halo outlined by the spatial distribution of companion galaxies to the Milky Way. Signatures of this spatial…
The galaxy correlation function serves as a fundamental tool for studying cosmology, galaxy formation, and the nature of dark matter. It is well established that more massive, redder and more compact galaxies tend to have stronger…
Our Milky Way Galaxy is a typical large spiral galaxy, representative of the most common morphological type in the local Universe. We can determine the properties of individual stars in unusual detail, and use the characteristics of the…
Elongated, bar-like galaxies without a significant disk component, with little rotation support and no gas, often form as a result of tidal interactions with a galaxy cluster, as was recently demonstrated using the IllustrisTNG-100…
In the standard paradigm of galaxy formation and evolution, the baryonic component of galaxies forms from the collapse and condensation of gas within dark matter haloes, and later grows from continuous accretion of gaseous mass, both in…
The wealth of data in the past decades, and especially in the past 15 years has transformed our picture of the gas around the Milky Way and other spiral galaxies. There is good evidence for extraplanar gas that is a few kpc in height and is…
Eliptical and bulge galaxies share a tight correlation of velocity distribution to both luminosity and black hole mass. There are similar orbital speeds for all galaxies of a given luminosity including dark matter (DM) at large radii. The…
We examine the most recent observational constraints arising from i) small-scale and large-scale Galactic dynamical properties, ii) star counts at faint magnitude and iii) microlensing experiments. From these constraints, we determine the…
Semi-analytical models (SAMs) are currently the best way to understand the formation of galaxies within the cosmic dark-matter structures. While they fairly well reproduce the local stellar mass functions, correlation functions and…
Clues to the origins and evolution of our Galaxy can be found in the kinematics of stars around us. Remnants of accreted satellite galaxies produce over- densities in velocity-space, which can remain coherent for much longer than spatial…