Galaxy Formation and Mass Assembly Processes
Summary
Galaxies emerge from the gravitational collapse of primordial density fluctuations within dark matter haloes, where baryonic gas cools, fragments and ignites star formation. Initial chemical enrichment proceeds as the first stars synthesise heavy elements, altering subsequent cooling pathways and enabling more efficient radiative losses. Growth occurs through both in situ star formation and the accretion of satellites and gas flows along the cosmic web. Major and minor mergers reshape morphology, drive nuclear activity and redistribute angular momentum, while feedback from supernovae and active galactic nuclei regulates further collapse and star formation efficiency. Over cosmic time, hierarchical assembly leads to the build-up of stellar mass, the quenching of star formation in massive systems and the emergence of the Hubble sequence of galaxy types. Observations across the electromagnetic spectrum, combined with cosmological simulations, have refined our understanding of how dark matter haloes, gas dynamics and feedback processes intertwine to produce the rich diversity of galaxies observed from the local Universe to the highest redshifts.
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Galaxy Formation and Mass Assembly Processes publication trend
The graph below shows the total number of articles in galaxy formation and mass assembly processes across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).
Technical terms
Dark matter halo: A gravitationally bound overdensity of non-luminous matter providing the potential well in which galaxies form.
Stellar mass: The total mass contained in stars within a galaxy, inferred from luminosity and stellar population models.
Dynamical mass: The total mass within a system estimated from kinematics, including stars, gas and dark matter.
Spectral energy distribution (SED): The flux of a galaxy measured across multiple wavelengths, used to derive physical properties such as age, dust content and star formation rate.
Cosmic star formation rate: The rate at which galaxies form new stars per unit volume of the Universe as a function of cosmic time.
Active galactic nucleus (AGN): A compact region at the centre of a galaxy where accretion onto a supermassive black hole produces high-energy emission.
Redshift (z): A measure of the cosmological expansion, indicating how much the wavelength of light has been stretched since emission.
References
- Galaxy and Mass Assembly (GAMA): Stellar-to-dynamical Mass Relation. I. Constraining the Precision of Stellar Mass Estimates. The Astrophysical Journal (2023).
- GAMA/DEVILS: cosmic star formation and AGN activity over 12.5 billion years. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (2023).
- Faint Galaxy Number Counts in the Durham and SDSS Catalogues. Galaxies (2023).
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