Abstract
We now come to the central problems in galaxy formation: When did galaxies form, over what timespan, and by what physical processes? What were the first self-luminous objects in the Universe? How did the oldest of today’s stars come by their small, but important, allotments of heavy elements? And why do we see the Universe today dominated by galaxies, instead of individual globular clusters, single stars, or even some kind of supergalaxy spanning a billion light-years?
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Bibliography
Books
Doroshkevich, A.G.; Sunyaev, R.A.; and Zel’dovich, Ya.B. (1974) “The formation of galaxies in Friedmannian universes”, in Confrontation of Cosmological Theories with Observational Data (D. Reidel, pp. 213–225).
Journals
Abel, T.; Bryan, G.L.; and Norman, M. (2002) “The Formation of the First Star in the Universe”, Science, 295, 93–98. Calculations of the formation and history of supermassive stars in the early, zero-metallicity Universe.
Baugh, C. (2006) “A primer on hierarchical galaxy formation: The semi-analytical approach”, Reports on Progress in Physics, 69, 3101–3156. Outlines many key considerations in modeling galaxy formation, and a powerful approach to bridging the gap between the cosmological background and processes within individual galaxies. Also available as astro-ph/0610031.
Baugh, C; Cole, S.; Frenk, C; and Lacey, C. (1998) “The Epoch of Galaxy Formation”, Astrophysical Journal, 498, 504–521. Presents a semianalytic model for galaxy formation with detailed comparison with the properties of observed galaxies, and clearly sets out the excess-dwarf problem posed by straightforward schemes involving cold dark matter.
Benson, A.J.; Pearce, F.R.; Frenk, C.S.; Baugh, C.M.; and Jenkins, A. (2001), “A comparison of semi-analytic and smoothed particle hydrodynamics galaxy formation”, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 320, 261–280. Compares results of the semianalytic and numerical-hydrodynamic schemes for simuulating galaxy formation. The differences can be understood from the properties of these two approaches.
Biermann, P.L. and Kusenko, A. (2006) “Relic keV Sterile Neutrinos and Reionization”, Physical Review Letters, 96, 091301. Possible impacts of sterile neutrinos as dark matter, on issues as diverse as the growth of black holes, reionization, and pulsar velocities.
Blumenthal, G.R.; Faber, S.M.; Primack, J.R.; and Rees, M.J. (1984) “Formation of galaxies and large-scale structure with cold dark matter”, Nature, 311, 517–525. Discusses the role of cooling timescales for various masses in galaxy formation. Their diagram of cooling time regimes versus clump mass has been widely reproduced and annotated (e.g., like fig. 17.3 of Peacock’s Cosmological Physics).
Bromm, V.; Coppi, P.S.; and Larson, R.B. (1999), “Forming the First Stars in the Universe: The Fragmentation of Primordial Gas”, Astrophysical Journal Letters, 527, L5–L8. The authors use numerical simulations to trace the cooling and collapse of metal-free gas, and the likely formation path for high-mass “Population III” stars.
Corbelli, E. and Salpeter, E.E. (1993) “Sharp H I Edges in the Outskirts of Disk Galaxies”, Astrophysical Journal, 419, 104–110. Shows that the H I disks of spiral galaxies are generally observed to have a sharp cutoff at a column density near 1019 atoms per square centimeter.
Fan, X.; Narayanan, V.K.; Strauss, M.A.; White, R.L.; Becker, R.H.; Pentericci, L.; and Rix, H.-W. (2002) “Evolution of the Ionizing Background and the Epoch of Reionization from the Spectra of z ∼ 6 Quasars”, Astronomical Journal, 123, 1247–1257. A recent treatment of the ionization history of the intergalactic medium, especially with regard to the contribution of quasars based on new surveys to high redshift.
Frenk, C.S.; White, S.D.M.; Bode, P.; Bond, J.R.; Bryan, G.L.; Cen, R.; Couchman, H.M.P.; Evrard, A.E.; Gnedin, N.; Jenkins, A. et al. (1999) “The Santa Barbara Cluster Comparison Project: A Comparison of Cosmological Hydrodynamics Solutions”, Astrophysical Journal, 525, 554–582. A detailed comparison of various techniques for tracing the development of cosmic structure, all run from the same initial conditions. Fortunately for our confidence in astrophysics and cosmology, the results are all in reasonable agreement.
Fricke, K.J.; Izotov, Y.; Papaderos, P.; Guseva, N.G.; and Thuan, T.X. (2001) “An Imaging and Spectroscopic Study of the Very Metal-deficient Blue Compact Dwarf Galaxy Tol 1214-3277”, Astronomical Journal, 121, 169. This study combines imaging and high-quality spectroscopy to argue that some blue compact galaxies began star formation only in the recent cosmic past.
Gnedin, N. (2000) “Cosmological Reionization by Stellar Sources”, Astrophysical Journal, 535, 530–554. Simulations of the history of reionization, showing the initially isolated “bubbles” of ionized gas growing to overlap and finally encompass the highest-density regions which need the largest ionizing flux.
Gnedin, N.Y.; Norman, M.L.; and Ostriker, J.P. (2000) “Formation of Galactic Bulges”, Astrophysical Journal, 540, 32–38. Simulations and analysis showing that scenarios with cold dark matter can yield clumps with 0.1-31 billion solar masses by z= 6, appropriate to form central bulges. A key issue is that the baryonic matter can cool and collapse to densities greater than the dark matter.
Gott, J.R., III (1973) “Dynamics of Rotating Stellar Systems: Collapse and Violent Relaxation”, Astrophysical Journal, 186, 481–500. Describes a technique for tracing the history of a collapsing stellar system. The results suggest that a starburst might, in fact, leave remnants that are found within a l-parsec radius after about 10 million years, within a preexisting stellar bulge. Some such process would dramatically speed the initial growth of central black holes.
Gratton, R.G.; Carretta, E.; Matteucci, F.; and Sneden, C. (2000) “Abundances of light elements in metal-poor stars. IV. [Fe/O] and [Fe/Mg] ratios and the history of star formation in the solar neighborhood”, Astronomy and Astrophysics, 358, 671–681. Uses chemical abundances to trace the history of star formation in the early Milky Way. They argue that the halo took less than a billion years to collapse toward a disk since the chemical signature of type Ia supernovae is not important in extreme halo stars.
Haehnelt, M.G. and Kauffmann, G. (2000) “The correlation between black hole mass and bulge velocity dispersion in hierarchical galaxy formation models”, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 318, L35–L38. Demonstrates that the observed relation between derived black-hole mass and stellar velocity dispersion (which parallels that for bulge stellar luminosity) can be preserved through merging, allowing ellipticals today to include many merger remnants without violating observational correlations.
Izotov, Y.; Chaffee, F.B.; Foltz, C.B.; Green, R.F.; Guseva, N.G.; and Thuan, T.X. (1999) “Helium Abundance in the Most Metal-deficient Blue Compact Galaxies: I Zw 18 and SBS 0335-3052”, Astrophysical Journal, 527, 757–777. Heavy-element abundances in the lowest-metallicity galaxies known.
Izotov, Y.I.; Papaderos, P.; Guseva, N.G.; Fricke, K.J.; and Thuan, T.X. (2006) “Two extremely metal-poor galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey”, Astronomy and Astrophysics, 454, 137–141.
Madsen, G.J.; Reynolds, R.J.; Haffner, L.M.; Tufte, S.L.; and Maloney, P.R. (2001) “Observations of the Extended Distribution of Ionized Hydrogen in the Plane of M31”, Astrophysical Journal Letters, 450, L135–L138. Uses the interstellar medium in the Andromeda Galaxy to estimate the ionizing radiation flux coming from outside its disk, by setting limits to the amount of Hα emission in areas close to the edge of the neutral hydrogen disk.
Maloney, P.R. (1993) “Sharp edges to neutral hydrogen disks in galaxies and the extragalactic radiation field”, Astrophysical Journal, 414, 41–56. Demonstrates that the observed truncation of galaxy disks as seen in H I would result from ionization by the mean extragalactic UV radiation field.
Oh, S.P. (1999) “Observational Signatures of the First Luminous Objects”, Astrophysical Journal, 527, 16–30. Considers various ways to detect a supermassive first generation of stars, among which are the most promising techniques that detect emission from the surrounding pockets of ionized gas.
Partridge, R.B. and Peebles, P.J.E. (1967) “Are Young Galaxies Visible?”, Astrophysical Journal, 147, 868–886. An early estimate of the observed properties of young galaxies at high redshift, one of a series of such efforts.
Press, W.H. and Schechter, P. (1974) “Formation of Galaxies and Clusters of Galaxies by Self-Similar Gravitational Condensation”, Astrophysical Journal, 187, 425–438. This treatment sets out what became a standard formulation for the instability expected for collapsing gaseous objects on various size and mass scales.
Qian, Y.-Z. and Wasserburg, G.J. (2002) “Determination of Nucleosynthetic Yields of Supernovae and Very Massive Stars from Abundances in Metal-Poor Stars”, Astro-physical Journal, 567, 515–531. Presents calculations of how much supernovae of types la and II, and the hypothetical very massive first-generation stars, need to have contributed to the observed abundances of the elements.
Rees, M. and Ostriker, J.P. (1977) “Cooling, dynamics, and fragmentation of massive gas clouds—Clues to the masses and radii of galaxies and clusters”, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 179, 541–559.
Scannapieco, E. and Broadhurst, T. (2001) “The Roles of Heating and Enrichment in Galaxy Formation”, Astrophysical Journal, 549, 28–45. Argues that the influence of early galactic winds shaped the subsequent history of star formation through stripping of cool gas, and that this process is important in solving the G-3dwarf problem and the excess dwarf problem from dark-matter simulations.
Schneider, S.E.; Helou, G.; Salpeter, E.E.; and Terzian, Y. (1983) “Discovery of a large intergalactic H I cloud in the M96 group”, Astrophysical Journal Letters, 273, L1–L5. Discovery of an extended intergalactic neutral hydrogen cloud, evidently a tidal remnant in the Leo galaxy group.
Sunyaev, R.A.; Tinsley, B.M.; and Meier, D.L. (1978) “Observable properties of primeval giant elliptical galaxies or ten million Orions at high redshift”, Comments on Modern Physics, Part C—Comments on Astrophysics, 7, 183–195. A simple model of young galaxies, considering ways to distinguish them from quasars. The authors drew attention to UV absorption lines from hot stars, thermal infrared emission from star-3heated dust, and the X-ray and radio emission from supernova remnants. They also mention (and underestimate) the Lyman break. In hindsight, they already saw most of the ways we now use to find high-redshift star-forming galaxies.
Taylor, C.L.; Thomas, D.L.; Brinks, E.; and Skillman, E.D. (1996) “A Survey of Low Surface Brightness Dwarf Galaxies to Detect H I-rich Companions”, Astrophysical Journal Supplement, 107, 143–174. A search for neutral hydrogen clouds near dwarf galaxies, whose existence would be relevant to the number of isolated H I clouds which have yet to form stars and thus would be candidates for delayed galaxy formation.
Thuan, T.X.; Izotov, Y.; and Foltz, C.B. (1999) “The Young Age of the Extremely Metal-deficient Blue Compact Dwarf Galaxy SBS 1415+437”, Astrophysical Journal, 525, 105–126. The authors use the chemical makeup and colors of this metal-poor galaxy to argue that it began star formation only within the last 100 million years or so.
Weedman, D.W. (1983) “Toward explaining Seyfert galaxies”, Astrophysical Journal, 466, 479–484. The fate of massive, compact stellar remnants of a starburst and their possible shrinkage toward a relativistic (unstable) configuration.
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2007 Praxis Publishing Ltd, Chichester, UK
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
(2007). The processes of galaxy formation. In: The Road to Galaxy Formation. Springer Praxis Books. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-72535-0_10
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-72535-0_10
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-72534-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-72535-0
eBook Packages: Physics and AstronomyPhysics and Astronomy (R0)