GALDISK

The Role of Secular Physical Processes in the Formation and Evolution of Disk Galaxies

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 Obiettivo del progetto (Objective)

'lthough strongly interacting and merging galaxies appear to produce the most spectacular and powerful events, they only represent a few percent of all galaxies that we see today. Consequently, a detailed understanding of the internal evolutionary processes (or secular processes) occurring in isolated or weakly interacting galaxies remains essential to account for most of observations, including the Hubble sequence. Numerical simulations have concentrated on the reproduction of the morphological features and kinematical patterns, but very few have modeled the star formation history and chemical evolution of the disk galaxies with bars. The main reason why previous numerical simulations have not concentrated in reproducing the stellar chemical features has been the simple fact that appropriate observational data has not been available. During the course of the next 3 years, I will derive star formation histories for the disk, bars, and bulges of a sample of galaxies with different spectral types. I will directly confront these data with High Performance Computational (HPC) simulations which include star formation and chemical evolution.'

Introduzione (Teaser)

To date, studies of interacting and merging galaxies have mostly focused on reproducing features and patterns. For a clearer understanding of evolutionary processes, a new age of simulation studies is dawning.

Descrizione progetto (Article)

The scant information on various aspects of astral and galaxial genesis and evolution is largely due to a lack of observational data. Now researchers are in search of answers to questions surrounding the formation of stars and the chemical evolution of disc galaxies with bars. A disc galaxy is a flattened circular volume of stars. Galaxies, the large gathering of stars, may have bars, a central (bar-shaped) grouping of stars, or bulges, a closely packed, usually central grouping of stars.

The 'The role of secular physical processes in the formation and evolution of disk galaxies' (Galdisk) project has set out to uncover the histories of star formation for the disc, bars and bulges of various galaxies. Achieving steps in this direction can take us a little closer to understanding how our Universe evolved to its present state: its chemistry, colour, gas, star light distribution and age.

The EU-funded researchers have been successful in bringing together a method of observational analyses of stellar populations of galaxies and simulation of these galaxies. Using a 'grid' code, they have realised the first cosmological simulation of a Milky Way-like galaxy, and graphically demonstrated how stars like the Sun may have migrated from their place of birth to their current location.

Observational work and high-performance computational techniques have been combined to highlight the physical mechanisms underlying the gradual transformation of the shapes of galaxies. Experimental results indicate that structures such as bars can survive for as long as their 'host' galaxy, but during their life also redistribute the material and thus change the appearance of the galaxy.

An interesting discovery has been evidence of recent galactic cannibalism of satellite 'neighbours' in the stellar light of massive galaxies. As Galdisk's work continues, more information will help uncover mysteries behind the form and function of our Universe.