Related papers: A new scenario for the origin of galactic warps
The Galactic bulge, that is the prominent out-of-plane over-density present in the inner few kiloparsecs of the Galaxy, is a complex structure, as the morphology, kinematics, chemistry and ages of its stars indicate. To understand the…
The standard picture for the formation of disk galaxies has come to face a number of problems related to angular momentum. Numerical simulations produce disks that are too small, and analytical models predict too much low angular momentum…
Observations reveal that mature spiral galaxies consist of stars, gases and plasma approximately distributed in a thin disk of circular shape, usually with a central bulge. The rotation velocities quickly increase from the galactic center…
Galactic disk formation requires knowledge about the initial conditions under which disk galaxies form, the boundary conditions that affect their secular evolution and the micro-physical processes that drive the multi-phase interstellar…
By making spectral absorption-line observations of disk galaxies at intermediate inclinations, we have been able to determine the amplitude of their constituent stars' random motions in three dimensions. This full measure of the shape of…
A new model for the formation of active galaxies is described. A key feature of this model is the idea that the birth of black holes in the centers of supergiant galaxies is strongly influenced by the large-scale distribution of matter in…
I review the observational side of the present state of the debate about the dark matter in galaxies, with emphasis on the core/cusp problem in low surface brightness galaxies, and the question of maximum / sub-maximum disks in spiral…
The Galactic bulge is now considered to be the inner three-dimensional part of the Milky Way's bar. It has a peanut shape and is characterized by cylindrical rotation. In N-body simulations, box/peanut bulges arise from disks through bar…
We investigate thin and thick stellar disc formation in Milky-Way-mass galaxies using twelve FIRE-2 cosmological zoom-in simulations. All simulated galaxies experience an early period of bursty star formation that transitions to a late-time…
In the past years a wealth of observations has unraveled the structural properties of the Dark and Luminous mass distribution in spirals. These have pointed out to an intriguing scenario not easily explained by present theories of galaxy…
Formation process(es) of galactic bulges are not yet clarified although several mechanisms have been proposed. In a previous study, we suggested one possibility that galactic bulges have been formed from the cold gas inflowing through…
The kinematical properties of elliptical galaxies formed during the mergers of equal mass, stars+gas+dark matter spiral galaxies are compared to the observed low velocity dispersions found for planetary nebulae on the outskirts of…
We argue that self-excited instabilities are the cause of spiral patterns in simulations of unperturbed stellar discs. In previous papers, we have found that spiral patterns were caused by a few concurrent waves, which we claimed were…
Galactic disks can form in asymmetric potentials of the assembling dark matter (DM) halos, giving rise to the first generation of gas-rich bars. Properties of these bars differ from canonical bars analyzed so far. Moreover, rapid disk…
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…
Galaxies are not distributed randomly throughout space but are instead arranged in an intricate "cosmic web" of filaments and walls surrounding bubble-like voids. There is still no compelling observational evidence of a link between the…
In the last years there has been a growing interest in the understanding a vast variety of scale invariant and critical phenomena occurring in nature. Experiments and observations indeed suggest that many physical systems develop…
An up-to-date overview of the recent history is given, aiming to present a helpful working guide to the literature and at the same time introduce key systems and observational results, starting from the Sun and going towards the Galactic…
The spherical gravitational collapse and virialization of arbitrary density fluctuations in an expanding universe is studied. In the context of the standard cosmological model and the peak $ansatz$, disk galaxies are supposed to be the…
Precession is a very common phenomenon for small-scale astronomical objects. However, the precession of galactic disks, occurring on a scale larger than kilo-parsec, has barely been studied in the literature. Quantifying this precession in…