Related papers: Two Disk Components from a Gas Rich Disk-Disk Merg…
We analyze high quality abundances data of solar neighborhood stars and show that there are two distinct regimes of [alpha/Fe] versus age which we identify as the epochs of the thick and thin disk formation. A tight correlation between…
Thick disks are common in spiral and S0 galaxies and seem to be an inherent part of galaxy formation and evolution. Our own Milky Way is host to an old thick disk. The stars associated with this disk are enhanced in the alpha-elements as…
Gas-rich disks in the early universe are highly turbulent and have giant star-forming clumps. Models suggest the clumps form by gravitational instabilities, and if they resist disruption by star formation, then they interact, lose angular…
It has been proposed that mergers induce starbursts and lead to important morphological changes in galaxies. Most studies so far have focused on large galaxies, but dwarfs might also experience such events, since the halo mass function is…
We extend our previous work on the age-chemical abundance structure of the Galactic outer disc to the inner disc (4 < r < 8 kpc) based on the SDSS/APOGEE survey. Different from the outer disc, the inner disc stars exhibit a clear bimodal…
Galaxy mergers trigger both star formation and accretion onto the central supermassive black hole. As a result of subsequent energetic feedback processes, it has long been proposed that star formation may be promptly extinguished in galaxy…
Stars form from cold molecular interstellar gas. Since this is relatively rare in the local Universe, galaxies like the Milky Way form only a few new stars per year. Typical massive galaxies in the distant Universe formed stars an order of…
We have undertaken the study of the elemental abundances and kinematic properties of a metal-poor sample of candidate thick-disk stars selected from the RAVE spectroscopic survey of bright stars to differentiate among the present scenarios…
We compare the star-formation history and dynamics of the Milky Way (MW) with the properties of distant disk galaxies. During the first ~4 Gyr of its evolution, the MW formed stars with a high star-formation intensity (SFI), Sigma_SFR~0.6…
Stars are likely to form or to be captured in AGN disks. Their mass reaches an equilibrium when their rate of accretion is balanced by that of wind. If the exchanged gas is well mixed with the stellar core, this metabolic process would…
We present the results of a self-consistent $N$-body simulation following the evolution of a primordial population of thick disc globular clusters (GCs). We study how the internal properties of such clusters evolve under the action of…
We use the extensive $Gaia$ Data Release 2 set of Long Period Variables to select a sample of Oxygen-rich Miras throughout the Milky Way disk and bulge for study. Exploiting the relation between Mira pulsation period and stellar…
The extent to which turbulence mixes gas in the face of recurrent infusions of fresh metals by supernovae (SN) could help provide important constraints on the local star formation conditions. This includes predictions of the metallicity…
Recent observations of the Milky Way (MW) found an unexpected steepening of the star-forming gas metallicity gradient around the time of the Gaia-Sausage-Enceladus (GSE) merger event. Here we investigate the influence of early…
We study the role of radial migration of stars on the chemical evolution of the Milky Way disk. In particular, we are interested in the impact of that process on the local properties of the disk (age-metallicity relation and its dispersion,…
We investigate chemical evolution in Milky Way-like galaxies based on the cold dark matter model in which cosmic structures form via hierarchical merging. We introduce chemical enrichment due to type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) into the Mitaka…
(Reduced)Using the NewHorizon simulation, we have studied ten gas-versus-star counter-rotating galaxies in field environments with a stellar mass of M*~[1-5]x10^10 Msun. For all of them, the retrograde accretion of gas either from gas…
The clustered nature of star formation should produce a high degree of structure in the combined phase and chemical space in the Galactic disk. To date, observed structure of this kind has been mostly limited to bound clusters and moving…
In this review, I present the case for how massive stars may form through stellar collisions. This mechanism requires very high stellar densities, up to 4 orders of magnitude higher than are observed in the cores of dense young clusters. In…
Most luminous infrared galaxies (LIGs) are closely interacting/merging systems rich in molecular gas. We study here the relationship between the stage of the galaxy-galaxy interactions, the molecular gas mass, and the star formation rate as…