Related papers: Dating Secular Evolution: Bar Ages from Stellar Ki…
The secular evolution process, which slowly transforms the morphology of a galaxy over its lifetime, could naturally account for observed properties of the great majority of physical galaxies if both stellar and gaseous accretion processes…
From this vast subject, I will pick out and review three specific topics, namely the formation and evolution of bars, the formation of bulges, and the evolution during multiple major mergers. Bars form naturally in galactic discs. Their…
Determining the sequence of events in the formation of stars and planetary systems and their time-scales is essential for understanding those processes, yet establishing ages is fundamentally difficult because we lack direct indicators. In…
Mass accretion is the key factor for evolution of galaxies. It can occur through secular evolution, when gas in the outer parts is driven inwards by dynamical instabilities, such as spirals or bars. This secular evolution proceeds very…
We developed an iterative technique to better characterize stellar populations and the central activity of barred galaxies using evolutionary synthesis codes and OASIS data. The case of NGC5430 is presented here. Our results are reinforcing…
It takes years of effort employing the best telescopes and instruments to obtain high-quality stellar photometry, astrometry, and spectroscopy. Stellar evolution models contain the experience of lifetimes of theoretical calculations and…
Star clusters and their stellar populations play a significant role in the context of galaxy evolution, across space (from local to high redshift) and time (from currently forming to fossil remnants). We are now within reach of answering a…
We present a study of the stellar populations within the central regions of four nearby barred galaxies, and use a novel technique to constrain the duration of bar activity. We focus on the star formation 'desert', a region within each of…
A strong bar rotating within a massive halo should lose angular momentum to the halo through dynamical friction, as predicted by Weinberg. We have conducted fully self-consistent, numerical simulations of barred galaxy models with a live…
After a recall of fundamental concepts used in galactic dynamics, we review observational facts as well as results of orbit theory and numerical simulations which suggest long-term evolution of galaxies. Dynamical interactions between…
We present recent progress on quantitative estimation of stellar ages using ind icators such as theoretical evolutionary tracks, rotation, rotation-driven chrom ospheric and coronal activity, and lithium depletion. Our focus is on roughly…
A key event in the history of the Milky Way is the formation of the bar. This event affects the subsequent structural and dynamical evolution of the entire Galaxy. When the bar formed, gas was likely rapidly funnelled to the centre of the…
Like the majority of spiral galaxies, the Milky Way contains a central non-axisymmetric bar component. Our position in the Galactic plane renders it rather hard to see, but also allows us to make measurements of the bar that are completely…
The age and chemical composition of the stars in present-day galaxies carry important clues about their star formation processes. The latest generation of population synthesis models have allowed to derive age and stellar metallicity…
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…
Bars are expected to impact the distribution of stellar populations both during bar formation, as they rearrange stars into new orbits, and afterwards, due to the redistribution of star-formation-fuelling gas and transfer of angular…
The formation of bars in disk galaxies is a tracer of the dynamical maturity of the population. Previous studies have found that the incidence of bars in disks decreases from the local Universe to z ~ 1, and by z > 1 simulations predict…
We have done a robust statistical analysis of UBV color profiles of 257 Sbc barred and unbarred galaxies. We found that there is an excess of barred galaxies among the objects with null or positive (bluish inward) color gradients, which…
Galaxies represent the visible fabric of the Universe and there has been considerable progress recently in both observational and theoretical studies. The underlying goal is to understand the present-day diversity of galaxy forms, masses…
Galactic bulges are complex systems. Once thought to be small-scale versions of elliptical galaxies, advances in astronomical instrumentation (spectroscopy in particular) has revealed a wealth of photometric and kinematic substructure in…