Related papers: How `heredity' and `environment' shape galaxy prop…
Recent observational and theoretical breakthroughs make this an exciting time to be working towards understanding the physics of galaxy formation. The goal of this review is to make the principles behind the hierarchical paradigm accessible…
The formation and evolution of galaxies is one of the great outstanding problems of astrophysics. Within the broad context of hierachical structure formation, we have only a crude picture of how galaxies like our own came into existence. A…
The dependence of star formation rate on galaxian environment is a key issue in the understanding of galaxy formation and evolution. However, the study of this subject is complex and observationally challenging. This paper reviews some of…
The star-formation histories of the main stellar components of the Milky Way constrain critical aspects of galaxy formation and evolution. I discuss recent determinations of such histories, together with their interpretation in terms of…
Properties of nearby dwarf galaxies are briefly discussed. Dwarf galaxies vary widely in their star formation histories, the ages of their subpopulations, and in their enrichment history. Furthermore, many dwarf galaxies show evidence for…
The study of colliding galaxies has progressed rapidly in the last few years, driven by observations with powerful new ground and space-based instruments. These instruments have used for detailed studies of specific nearby systems,…
In the current galaxy formation scenarios, two physical phenomena are invoked to build disk galaxies: hierarchical mergers and more quiescent external gas accretion, coming from intergalactic filaments. Although both are thought to play a…
Due to the inherently nonlinear nature of gravity cosmological N-body simulations have become an invaluable tool when the growth of structure is being studied and modelled closer to the present epoch. Large simulations with high dynamical…
The evolution of the content of heavy elements in galaxies, the relative chemical abundances, their spatial distribution, and how these scale with various galactic properties, provide unique information on the galactic evolutionary…
To understand galaxies and their evolution, it is necessary to describe how the different scales interact: how the microscopic physics, such as star formation, or the large scale physics, such as galaxy interactions may modify the galaxy…
Galaxy interactions expel a significant amount of stars and gas into the surrounding environment. I review the formation and evolution of the tidal debris spawned during these collisions, and describe how this evolution depends on the large…
Metals -- heavy elements synthesized during various phases of stellar evolution or during supernova explosions -- play a fundamental role in shaping galaxy evolution. In fact, their relative abundances, spatial distribution, and scaling…
The most recent results and some of the open key questions on the evolution of early-type galaxies are reviewed in the general cosmological context of massive galaxy formation.
The primary present-day observables upon which theories of galaxy evolution are based are a system's morphology, dynamics, colour, and chemistry. Individually, each provides an important constraint to any given model; in concert, the four…
Multiwavelength data on star-forming galaxies provide strong evidence for large-scale galactic winds in both nearby and distant objects. The results from recent ground-based and space-borne programs are reviewed. The impact of these winds…
The study of the morphology of galaxies is important in order to understand the formation and evolution of galaxies and their sub-components as a function of luminosity, environment, and star-formation and galaxy assembly over cosmic time.…
We provide a review on semi-empirical models of galaxy formation and evolution. We present a brief census of the three main modeling approaches to galaxy evolution, namely hydrodynamical simulations, semi-analytic models, and semi-empirical…
The environment is known to affect the formation and evolution of galaxies considerably best visible through the well-known morphology-density relationship. In this paper we study the effect of environment on the evolution of early-type…
Galaxies, in particular disc galaxies, contain a number of structures and substructures with well defined morphological, photometric and kinematic properties. Considerable theoretical effort has been put into explaining their formation and…
The intrinsic properties of galaxies are influenced by their environments, underscoring the environment's critical role in galaxy formation and evolution. Traditionally, these environments are categorized into four fixed classifications:…