Related papers: Formation Scenarios
We summarise recent results from analysis of APOGEE/Gaia data for stellar populations in the Galactic halo, disk, and bulge, leading to constraints on the contribution of dwarf galaxies and globular clusters to the stellar content of the…
The disk galaxy simulated using our chemo-dynamical galaxy formation code, GCD+, is shown to have a thick disk component. This is evidenced by the velocity dispersion versus age relation for solar neighbourhood stars, which clearly shows an…
The earliest phases of the chemical evolution of our Galaxy are analysed in the light of the recent VLT results (concerning abundance patterns in the most metal-poor stars of the Galactic halo) and of stellar nucleosynthesis calculations.…
The Milky Way's progenitor experienced several merger events which left their imprints on the stellar halo, including the Gaia-Sausage/Enceladus. Recently, it has been proposed that this event perturbed the proto-disk and gave rise to a…
The behavior of the relative magnesium abundances in the thin-disk stars versus their orbital radii suggests that the star formation rate in the thin disk decreases with increasing Galactocentric distance, and there was no star formation…
There is overwhelming evidence that the Milky Way has formed its stars at a rel- atively constant rate throughout the Hubble time. This implies that its stock of cold gas was not in place since the beginning but it has been acquired slowly…
We investigate the ab-initio formation of super-massive stars in a pristine atomic cooling halo. The halo is extracted from a larger self-consistent parent simulation. The halo remains metal-free and star formation is suppressed due to a…
The early chemical evolution of the Galaxy and the Universe is vital to our understanding of a host of astrophysical phenomena. Since the most metal-poor Galactic stars (with metallicities down to [Fe/H]\sim-5.5) are relics from the…
We use high resolution cosmological hydrodynamical simulations to demonstrate that cold flow gas accretion, particularly along filaments, modifies the standard picture of gas accretion and cooling onto galaxy disks. In the standard picture,…
We develop a new method to account for the finite lifetimes of stars and trace individual abundances within a semi-analytic model of galaxy formation. At variance with previous methods, based on the storage of the (binned) past star…
The cosmic history of star formation is briefly reviewed, starting with the Milky Way and then discussing observations relevant to the closed box and hierarchical build-up models. Observations of local star formation are reviewed for…
We present first results from a program to measure the chemical abundances of a large (N>30) sample of thick disk stars with the principal goal of investigating the formation history of the Galactic thick disk. Our analysis confirms…
The difference in density profiles of the contributions from different density peaks to dark matter halos results in certain expectations about the Milky Way's stellar halo. We cut our simulated halo stars into two populations: those…
We employ hydrodynamical simulations to study the effects of dissipational gas physics on the vertical heating and thickening of disc galaxies during minor mergers. For the first time we present a suite of simulations that includes a…
In the simplest scenario, disk galaxies form predominantly in halos with high angular momentum and quiet recent assembly history, whereas spheroids are the slowly-rotating remnants of repeated merging events. We explore these assumptions…
The formation of the Milky Way is discussed within the context of the cold dark matter scenario. Several problems arise which can be solved if the Galaxy experienced an early phase of gas heating and decoupling from the dark matter…
We present results concerning the internal structure and kinematics of disk galaxies formed in cosmologically motivated simulations. The calculations include dark matter, gas dynamics, radiative cooling, star formation, supernova feedback…
Disk galaxies evolve over time through processes that may rearrange both the radial mass profile and the metallicity distribution within the disk. This review of such slow changes is largely, though not entirely, restricted to…
Massive satellite accretions onto early galactic disks can lead to the deposition of dark matter in disk-like configurations that co-rotate with the galaxy. This phenomenon has potentially dramatic consequences for dark matter detection…
We present six simulations of galactic stellar haloes formed by the tidal disruption of accreted dwarf galaxies in a fully cosmological setting. Our model is based on the Aquarius project, a suite of high resolution N-body simulations of…