Related papers: Bars, Spiral Structure, and Secular Evolution in D…
Context. Bars are elongated structures developed by a large fraction of disk galaxies in their central few kiloparsecs. However, the bar formation process is still not fully understood, particularly the role played by the galaxy environment…
Simulations have shown that bars are subject to a vertical buckling instability that transforms thin bars into boxy or peanut-shaped structures, but the physical conditions necessary for buckling to occur are not fully understood. We use…
The formation of thick stellar disks in spiral galaxies is studied. Simulations of gas-rich young galaxies show formation of internal clumps by gravitational instabilities, clump coalescence into a bulge, and disk thickening by strong…
We perform controlled N-body simulations of disc galaxies growing within live dark matter (DM) haloes to present-day galaxies that contain both thin and thick discs. We consider two types of models: a) thick-disc initial conditions to which…
Stellar bars are a common morphological feature of spiral galaxies. While it is known that they can form in isolation, or be induced tidally, few studies have explored the production of stellar bars in galaxy merging. We look to investigate…
This is the first paper of a series aimed to understand the formation and evolution of bars in early-type spirals and their influence in the evolution of the galaxy. Optical long-slit spectra along the major axis of the bar of a sample of…
The formation of galaxies and their various components can be stringent tests of dark matter models and of gravity theories. In the standard cold dark matter (CDM) model, spheroids are formed through mergers in a strongly hierarchical…
Contrary to traditional models of galaxy formation, recent observations suggest that some bulges form within preexisting disk galaxies. Such late-epoch bulge formation within disks seems to be linked to disk gas inflow and central star…
Young stellar bars in disk galaxies experience a vertical buckling instability which terminates their growth and thickens them, resulting in a characteristic peanut/boxy shape when viewed edge on. Using N-body simulations of galactic disks…
Stellar bars are a common feature in massive disc galaxies. On a theoretical ground, the response of gas to a bar is generally thought to cause nuclear starbursts and, possibly, AGN activity once the perturbed gas reaches the central…
When galactic discs settle and become massive enough, they are able to form stellar bars. These non-axisymmetric structures induce shocks in the gas, causing it to flow to the centre where nuclear structures, such as nuclear discs and…
One third of present-day spirals host optically visible strong bars that drive their dynamical evolution. However, the fundamental question of how bars evolve over cosmological times has yet to be addressed, and even the frequency of bars…
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…
The growth of black holes (BHs) in disk galaxies lacking classical bulges, which implies an absence of significant mergers, appears to be driven by secular processes. Short bars of sub-kiloparsec radius have been hypothesized to be an…
A multi-faceted approach is described to constrain the importance of bar-driven evolution in disk galaxies, particularly bulge formation. N-body simulations are used to construct stellar kinematic bar diagnostics for edge-on systems and to…
We have measured the radial light profiles and global shapes of bars using two-dimensional 3.6 $\mu m $ image decompositions for 144 face-on barred galaxies from the Spitzer Survey of Stellar Structure in Galaxies (S4G). The bar surface…
Substantial numbers of morphologically regular early-type (elliptical and lenticular) galaxies contain molecular gas, and the quantities of gas are probably sufficient to explain recent estimates of the current level of star formation…
Observations in the Hubble Deep Fields have been used to study the evolution of galaxy morphology over time. The majority of galaxies with z < 1 are seen to be disk like, whereas most objects with z > 2 appear to be either chaotic or…
We review the observational evidences concerning the three-dimensional structure of the Galactic bulge. Although the inner few kpc of our Galaxy are normally referred to as {\it the bulge}, all the observations demonstrate that this region…
In the cold dark matter (CDM) paradigm, bulges easily form through galaxy mergers, either major or minor, or through clumpy disks in the early universe, where clumps are driven to the center by dynamical friction. Also pseudo-bulges, with a…