Related papers: Formation Scenarios
The Milky Way in-situ halo, also known as the Splash, consists of old (Age $>$ 10 Gyr), metal-rich ([Fe/H] $> -0.7$), high-$\alpha$ stars, i.e., thick disk-like chemistry, on halo-like orbits (eccentricity > 0.6). Its origin is linked to…
The formation of galaxies can be understood in terms of the assembly patterns of each type of galactic component. To perform this kind of analysis, is necessary to define some criteria to separate those components. Decomposition methods…
In the standard model of structure formation, galaxies form in the centre of dark matter haloes that develop as a result of inhomogeneities in the primordial mass distribution of the Universe. Afterwards, galaxies grow by means of…
We investigate the formation of the stellar halos of four simulated disk galaxies using high resolution, cosmological SPH + N-Body simulations. These simulations include a self-consistent treatment of all the major physical processes…
Disc galaxies show a large morphological diversity with varying contribution of three major structural components; thin discs, thick discs, and central bulges. Dominance of bulges increases with the galaxy mass (Hubble sequence) whereas…
We develop a detailed model of the Milky Way (a ``prototypical'' disk galaxy) and extend it to other disks with the help of some simple scaling relations, obtained in the framework of Cold Dark Matter models. This phenomenological…
New information on the relations between the Galactic disks, the halo, and satellite galaxies is being obtained from elemental abundances of stars having metallicities in the range -1.5 < [Fe/H] < -0.5. The first results for a sample of 26…
APOGEE and Gaia data have revealed that the Milky Way's structure appears to have evolved through three distinct kinematic phases. First, at early cosmic times, the Milky Way was a disordered protogalaxy, which subsequently "spun up" to a…
The origin of metal-rich, highly flattened, and rapidly rotating disk globular cluster system in the Galaxy is one of longstanding issues in the context of the Galaxy formation. Our numerical simulations suggest a new ``two-fold'' scenario…
We investigate the build-up of the accreted stellar and dark matter haloes of Milky Way-like galaxies in APOSTLE suite of cosmological hydrodynamics simulations. We show that the stellar halo is made up primarily of stars stripped from a…
(Abridged) We conduct a series of high-resolution, dissipationless N-body simulations to investigate the cumulative effect of substructure mergers onto thin disk galaxies in the context of the LCDM paradigm of structure formation. Our…
We review observational evidence bearing on the formation of a prototypical large spiral galaxy, the Milky Way. New ground- and space-based studies of globular star clusters and dwarf spheroidal galaxies provide a wealth of information to…
Most Galaxy-sized systems (M_host ~ 10^12 M_sun) in the LCDM cosmology are expected to have accreted at least one satellite with a total mass M_sat ~ 10^11 M_sun = 3M_disk in the past 8 Gyr. Analytic and numerical investigations suggest…
We develop an explicit model for the formation of the stellar halo from tidally disrupted, accreted dwarf satellites in the cold dark matter (CDM) framework, focusing on predictions testable with the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) and…
A galactic disk in a spiral galaxy is generally believed to be embedded in an extended dark matter halo, which dominates its dynamics in the outer parts. However, the shape of the halo is not clearly understood. Here we show that the dark…
We present a cosmologically motivated model for the hierachical formation of the stellar halo which includes a semi-analytic treatment of galactic chemical enrichment coupled to numerical simulations that track the orbital evolution and…
We study the orbital properties of stars in four (published) simulations of thick disks formed by: i) accretion from disrupted satellites, ii) heating of a pre-existing thin disk by a minor merger, iii) radial migration and iv) gas rich…
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…
We study the stellar discs and spheroids in eight simulations of galaxy formation within Milky Way-mass haloes in a Lambda Cold Dark Matter cosmology. A first paper in this series concentrated on disc properties. Here, we extend this…
Spatial, kinematic, and orbital properties, along with ages and chemical compositions of the thin disc, thick disc, and various stellar substructures in the halo, are studied based on data from the LAMOST and Gaia surveys. The star…