Secular evolution in disks through angular momentum redistribution of stars induce radial mixing of their orbits. While theoretical studies and simulations now abound on the subject - with various predicted effects: disks growth, flattening of metallicity gradients, possible reversing of the mean age as a function of radius in disk, etc, observational evidences remain sparse. In the Galaxy, possible signatures are searched for in the local distributions of velocities, abundances and ages, or in the variation of large scale chemical gradients with time. I will present the current state of affairs and discuss what kind of evidences is available from data in the Milky Way.

We use samples of local main-sequence stars to show that the radial gradient of [Fe/H] in the thin disk of the Milky Way decreases with mean effective stellar temperature. We use the angular momentum of each star about the Galactic center to eliminate the effects of epicyclic motion, which would otherwise blur the estimated gradients. We use the effective temperatures as a proxy for mean age, and conclude that the decreasing gradient is consistent with the predictions of radial mixing due to transient spiral patterns. We find some evidence that the trend of decreasing gradient with increasing mean age breaks to a constant gradient for samples of stars whose main-sequence life-times exceed the likely age of the thin disk.

The Carnegie-Irvine Galaxy Survey (CGS) is a long term program to investigate the photometric and spectroscopic properties of a statistically complete sample of 605 bright (BT < 12.9 mag), southern (delta < 0 deg) galaxies using the facilities at Las Campanas Observatory. For each galaxy, we have broadband images (BVRI) with good seeing (≈1″) and deep surface brightness (≈27.5 B-band). Using the IRAF task ELLIPSE and the fourier decomposition method, we measured the bar and the lopsidedness properties of disk galaxies in the CGS sample. Our results show that the bar fraction is lower in the early-type galaxies than that in the late-type ones. The (relative) bar length is longer in early-type ones, and strong bars are rare (the one with large ellipticity). We find that the lopsidedness is independent on the galaxy environment, and correlation studies suggest that the lopsided disk may have helped drive gas inward to form stars.

Star clusters are one of fundamental building blocks of galactic disks. They form in a potential well of spiral arms and travel in the disk. We performed N-body simulation of star clusters in stellar disk with “live” spiral arms. In this simulation, both star clusters and stellar disks are modeled as N-body systems. We found that star clusters migrated in the galactic disk in a timescale of their galactic rotation. The tidal tails spread over a few kpc, but they might be detectable if we are able to measure their velocity.

Since the discovery of rotating galaxy bulges (e.g. Pease 1918; Babcock 1938, 1939), especially in the 1970s (e.g. Rubin, Ford & Kumar 1973; Pellet 1976; Bertola & Capaccioli 1977; Peterson 1978; Mebold et al. 1979; Kormendy & Illingworth 1979), coupled with early computer simulations of disks which formed rotating, exponential-like “pseudobulges” (e.g. Bardeen 1975; Hohl 1975, and references therein), a number of often over-looked problems pertaining to the identification of real “pseudobulges” have arisen. Drawing on my recent review article of disk galaxy structure and modern scaling laws (Graham 2012), some of these important issues are presented. Topics include: classical spheroids with exponential light distributions; curved but continuous scaling relations involving the ‘effective’ structural parameters; the old age of most bulge stars (e.g. Thomas & Davies 2006; MacArthur et al. 2009); that most disk galaxies have bulge-to-disk flux ratios < 1/3 (Graham & Worley 2008); rotation in simulated merger remnants (e.g. Bekki 2010; Keselman & Nusser 2012) plus many other frustrating yet interesting reasons why rotation may not be a definitive signature of bulges built via secular processes (e.g. Babusiaux et al. 2010; Williams et al. 2010, Qu et al. 2011; Saha et al. 2012)

Azimuthally averaged surface brightness profiles of disc galaxies provide a most useful practical classification scheme which gives insights into their evolution. Freeman (1970) first classified disc profiles into Type I, with a single exponential decline in surface brightness, and Type II, having a split exponential profile, whose inner radial portion is shallower than its outer section. Van der Kruit & and Searle, (1981) drew attention to sharply truncated profiles of outer discs observed edge-on, but more recently Pohlen et al. (2004) showed that if these same galaxies were observed face-on their profiles would be of Type II. Finally in Erwin, Beckman and Pohlen (2005) we found a significant fraction of profiles with inner portion steeper than the outer portion, which we termed “antitruncations“ or Type III profiles. In Erwin, Pohlen and Beckman (2008), we produced a refined classification, taking into account those Type II's produced by dynamical effects at the outer Lindblad resonance, and those Type III's caused by the presence of an outer stellar halo. In Gutiérrez et al. (2011) we showed the distribution of the three main profile types along the Hubble sequence. In early type discs Types I and III predominate, while in late types, Sc and later, Type II predominates.

The evolution of Type II's over cosmic time was studied by Azzollini et al. (2008a, 2008b) who obtained four key results: (a) between z = 1 and z = 0 the break radius between the inner (shallower) and outer (steeper) profile has increased systematically, by a factor 1.3; (b) the inner profile has steepened while the outer profile is shallower at lower z; (c) the extrapolated central surface brightness has fallen by over two magnitudes; (d) the discs in the full redshift interval are always bluest at the break radius. While this behaviour can be qualitatively explained via evolutionary models including stellar migration plus gas infall, such as that by Roskar et al. (2008), and while Type III profiles may have a qualitative explanation via mergers and/or accretion, the widespread existence of Type I's is still a major conceptual challenge.

Structure within a galaxy is not random, instead emerging as a direct function of its evolutionary path. It is thought that secular evolutionary processes leave behind distinct structural tracers in the form of bars, pseudo-bulges and rings. We have developed a robust automated structural analysis pipeline (Kelvin et al., 2012) able to accurately map structure across a range of ground and space-based datasets. Using reprocessed SDSS and UKIDSS data from the GAMA survey: an imaging and spectroscopic survey with over 300,000 redshifts across 300 square degrees (Driver et al., 2009); we measure the relative abundance and stellar mass locked up within these structures in the local (z<0.06) Universe. Future robust calculations of the stellar mass budget within bulges, bars, disks and pseudo-bulges should allow us to measure the relative importance of secular evolution against other mechanisms across cosmic time.

We have performed state-of-the-art high resolution simulations of early-type galaxies with bars, including (multi-phase) gas, star formation and feedback. The aim of this programme is to better understand the observed morphology, kinematical structures, (2D) metallicity distribution, observed in fast rotators with bars. Our simulations were designed via a newly developed code allowing us to build a library of initial conditions closely mimicking barred galaxies in the Atlas3D sample. We will present the role and importance of bars on the gas fueling, redistribution of angular momentum, and overall secular evolution of fast rotators. These results are compared with actual observations (IFU, CO maps, stellar population distributions) obtained in the course of the Atlas3D project. The results from these “early-type“ simulations will also be compared in the context of recently conducted simulations of later-type barred galaxies, including one of a Milky-Way type object with a resolution down to 0.05 parsec.

Early-type dwarf galaxies are often thought to be either more diffuse versions of giant ellipticals or to be low-mass disk galaxies that were quenched and heated by the environment. In both cases, the picture that most astronomers have in mind probably is that of a dynamically hot, regular shaped galaxy, in which any previous substructure has either been smeared out, or has never been there. However, the early-type dwarfs are not that simple.

We analyzed ~100 such objects in the Virgo cluster using deep near-infrared images and found that the majority has a multi-component structure, sometimes even with bars or lenses. The study was done by applying GALFIT to images from the SMAKCED collaboration (Stellar content, MAss and K inematics of Cluster Early-type Dwarfs, http://www.smakced.net). The sample comprises early-type galaxies in the Virgo cluster in a brightness range of −19 ≤ Mr ≤ −16 mag, and the data is complete down to Mr=−16.73 mag. The images typically reach a signal-to-noise ratio of 1 per pixel of ~0.25” at a surface brightness of ~22.5 mag/arcsec2 in the H-band. The galaxies were fitted with two-dimensional models, either with a simple Sérsic model or inner and outer components, as well as bars and lenses. Only a fraction of 31% of the galaxies can be fitted with a single Sérsic function. This fraction of “simple“ galaxies turns out to be a strong function of luminosity, with a smaller fraction for brighter objects. The bar fraction is 14% and also in 14% of the galaxies lenses were fitted.

When comparing the flattening distribution, the early-type dwarfs are more similar to spiral galaxies than to elliptical or lenticular galaxies. It is disputable whether or not the dwarfs follow a common relation with the bright elliptical galaxies, e.g. in the brightness versus size diagram. At the same time, they appear as smooth continuation of bright late-type galaxies in this diagram. The inner and outer components, as well as the simple galaxies have similar flattening distributions. The inner components are mostly fitted with Sérsic-n values close to~1, i.e. with nearly exponential profiles. We argue that the inner components in the early-type dwarfs are not be bulges but may form parts of the disks, in which the matter was re-distributed during the transformation process from a late-type progenitor.

The AMIGA project (Analysis of the interstellar Medium of Isolated GAlaxies, http://amiga.iaa.es) has identified a significant sample of very isolated (Tcc(nearest-neighbor) ≈2-3Gyr) galaxies in the local Universe and revealed that they have different properties than galaxies in richer environments. Our analysis of a multiwavelength database includes quantification of degree of isolation, morphologies, as well as FIR and radio line/continuum properties.

Properties usually regarded as susceptible to interaction enhancement show lower averages in AMIGA–lower than any galaxy sample yet identified. We find lower MIR/FIR measures (Lisenfeld et al. 2007), low levels of radio continuum emission (Leon et al. 2008), no radioexcess above the radioFIR correlation (0%, Sabater et al.2008), a small number of AGN (22%, Sabater et al. 2012), and lower molecular gas content (Lisenfeld et al. 2011). The late-type spiral majority in our sample show very small bulge/total ratios (largely <0.1) and Sersic indices consistent with an absence of classical bulges (Durbala et al. 2008). They show redder g-r colors and lower color dispersion for AMIGA subtypes (Fernandez-Lorenzo et al. 2012) and show the narrowest (gaussian) distribution of HI profile asymmetries of any sample yet studied.

This work has been supported by Grant AYA2011-30491-C02-01 co-financed by MICINN and FEDER funds, and the Junta de Andalucia (Spain) grants P08-FQM-4205 and TIC-114.

Continuously accreting matter from cosmic filaments is one of the main way to assemble mass for galaxies (Keres et al.2005, Dekel et al.2009). This external accretion accelerates secular processes, and maintain star formation, but also bar and spiral formation (Bournaud & Combes 2002), and consequent radial migration. Secular evolution may alleviate the problem of too massive bulge formation in the standard LCDM hierarchical scenario. Inside out formation of galaxies may account for the evolution of the size-mass relation and evolution with redshift. I will show how gas accretion from the inter galactic medium can mimick perturbations due to galaxy interactions (cf Figure 1), and I will describe evidence of such accretion, through warps, polar rings or damped Lyman-α systems.

We report the study performed as part of the AMIGA (Analysis of the interstellar Medium of Isolated GAlaxies; http://www.amiga.iaa.es) project, focused on the SDSS (g-r) colors of the sample. Assuming that color is an indicator of star formation history, this work better records the signature of passive star formation via pure secular evolution. Median values for each morphological type in AMIGA were compared with equivalent measures for galaxies in denser environments. We found a tendency for AMIGA spiral galaxies to be redder than galaxies in close pairs, but no clear difference when we compare with galaxies in other (e.g. group) environments. The (g-r) color of isolated galaxies presents a Gaussian distribution, as indicative of pure secular evolution, and a smaller median absolute deviation (almost half) compared to both wide and close pairs. This redder color and lower color dispersion of AMIGA spirals compared with close pairs is likely due to a more passive star formation in very isolated galaxies. In Fig. 1, we represent the size versus stellar mass for early and late–type galaxies of our sample, compared with the local relations of Shen et al. (2003). The late–type isolated galaxies are ~1.2 times larger or have less stellar mass than local spirals in other environments. The latter would be in agreement with the passive star formation found in the previous part.

We acknowledge Grant AYA2011-30491-C02-01, P08-FQM-4205 and TIC-114.

We present new observations of Hoag's Object, known as “the most perfect ring galaxy,“ that show that a preferred explanation for this object is (a) the formation of a triaxial elliptical galaxy some 10 Gyr ago, (b) the accretion of a large disk of neutral hydrogen at about the same time, (c) low-level star formation in the HI disk for all the time since that event triggered by the triaxial potential of the core.

Recent works which have looked at bars in clusters versus the field have found no significant difference in bar fraction. However, other works (Nair & Abraham 2010, Lee et al.2012) have found that bar fractions depend sensitively on the mass, morphology and color of the galaxy. In addition, simulations suggest that bar formation may depend on the merger ratio of close pair interactions as well as on the separation between the pairs. In this work, we analyze the bar fractions in a complete sample of ≈23,000 close pairs derived from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 7. We will present results illustrating the dependence of bar and ring fractions as a function of merger mass ratio, pair separation, galaxy morphology, and stellar mass. I will further compare the role of bars and close pairs in triggering central star formation and AGN.

An important factor controlling galaxy evolution is feedback from massive stars. It is believed that the nature and intensity of stellar feedback changes as a function of galaxy mass and metallicity. At low mass and metallicity, feedback from massive stars is mainly in the form of photoionizing radiation. At higher mass and metallicity, it is in stellar winds. I Zw 18 is a local blue, compact dwarf galaxy that meets the requirements for a primitive galaxy: low halo mass <109M⊙, strong photoionizing radiation, no galactic outflow, and very low metallicity, log(O/H)+12=7.2. We will describe the properties of massive stars and their role in the evolution of I Zw 18, based on analysis of ultraviolet images and spectra obtained with HST.

If Einstein-Newton gravity holds on galactic and larger scales, then current observations demonstrate that the stars and interstellar gas of a typical bright galaxy account for only a few percent of its total nonlinear mass. Dark matter makes up the rest and cannot be faint stars or any other baryonic form because it was already present and decoupled from the radiation plasma at z = 1000, long before any nonlinear object formed. The weak gravito-sonic waves so precisely measured by CMB observations are detected again at z = 4 as order unity fluctuations in intergalactic matter. These subsequently collapse to form today's galaxy/halo systems, whose mean mass profiles can be accurately determined through gravitational lensing. High-resolution simulations link the observed dark matter structures seen at all these epochs, demonstrating that they are consistent and providing detailed predictions for all aspects of halo structure and growth. Requiring consistency with the abundance and clustering of real galaxies strongly constrains the galaxy-halo relation, both today and at high redshift. This results in detailed predictions for galaxy assembly histories and for the gravitational arena in which galaxies live. Dark halos are not expected to be passive or symmetric but to have a rich and continually evolving structure which will drive evolution in the central galaxy over its full life, exciting warps, spiral patterns and tidal arms, thickening disks, producing rings, bars and bulges. Their growth is closely related to the provision of new gas for galaxy building.

In recent years, effects such as the radial migration of stars in disks have been recognized as important drivers of the properties of stellar populations. Radial migration arises due to perturbative effects of disk structures such as bars and spiral arms, and can deposit stars formed in disks to regions far from their birthplaces. Migrant stars can significantly affect the demographics of their new locales, especially in low-density regions such as in the outer disks. However, in the cosmological environment, other effects such as mergers and filamentary gas accretion also influence the disk formation process. Understanding the relative importance of these processes on the detailed evolution of stellar population signatures is crucial for reconstructing the history of the Milky Way and other nearby galaxies. In the Milky Way disk in particular, the formation of the thickened component has recently attracted much attention due to its potential to serve as a diagnostic of the galaxy's early history. Some recent work suggests, however, that the vertical structure of Milky Way stellar populations is consistent with models that build up the thickened component through migration. I discuss these developments in the context of cosmological galaxy formation.

We study the properties of bars in a series of zoom cosmological simulations (Martig et al.2012, Kraljic et al.2012). We find that bars are almost absent from galaxies at z>1, and if they form they tend to be quickly destroyed by mergers and instabilities. On the contrary, at z<1 bars are long-lived, and the fraction of barred galaxies rises steadily. Bars are eventually found in ~ 80% of z=0 spiral galaxies. This redshift evolution is quantitatively consistent with existing data from the COSMOS survey (Sheth et al.2008), although the detectability of bars is presently limited to z<0.8 because of band-shifting and resolution effects. We predict later bar formation in lower-mass galaxies, also in agreement with existing data (e.g., Sheth et al.2012). We actually find that the characteristic epoch of bar formation is the epoch of massive thin disk formation, corresponding to the transition between an early violent phase at z > 1 and a later secular phase. Bar formation thus traces the emergence of the disk-dominated morphology of today's spirals.

Some recent works indicate that most star-forming galaxies follow a main sequence in the SFR-stellar mass plane with a surprisingly low scatter of ≈0.2 dex, suggesting that the star formation in these objects is driven by secular processes. Nevertheless, Herschel identified a population of starbursting galaxies, probably triggered by mergers, which display a large excess of specific star formation rate (sSFR=SFR/Mstar) compared to the main sequence. We will present a new set of models for the contribution of these two populations to the IR/sub-mm luminosity function, but also to source counts selected at various wavelengths.

Our model is based on the stellar mass function of star-forming galaxies, the distribution of sSFR measured at z=2 and its double-Gaussian decomposition, and the observed evolution of the main sequence in the sSFR-Mass plane as a function of redshift. We found that the non-Schechter bright-end of the LF is due to the starbursting galaxies, which represent only 4% in number density and 15% in luminosity density. This fraction of starbursts is remarkably constant with the redshift at 0<z<2, contrary to naive expectation from hierarchical merging. It thus suggests that the majority of stars in the Universe were formed through secular processes. We will then discuss the contribution of starbursting and main sequence galaxies to the number counts and the selection effects towards starbursts sources for various flux-limited IR/sub-mm samples.

We will also present studies of the clustering properties of the main sequence and starburst galaxies at z 2. These measurements suggest strong links between star formation rate, stellar mass and halo mass in the main sequence galaxies. In addition, we will present some clues suggesting that main sequence and starbursting galaxies follows the same M*-Mhalo relation.”

Young galaxies viewed at high redshift have high turbulent velocities, high star formation rates, high gas fractions, and chaotic structures, suggesting wild instabilities during which giant gas clumps form and make stars in their dense regions, stir other disk stars and gas, and transport angular momentum outward with a resulting net mass flow inward (e.g., Ceverino et al.2010). At z=1.5, 40% of star-forming galaxies have significant clumps (Elmegreen et al.2007; Wuyts et al.2012), and in these, 10%-20% of the stellar mass is in clumps that last ~150 Myr (Elmegreen et al.2009; Wuyts et al.2012). The thick disk and bulge in modern galaxies could form in this phase. The similarity in the α/Fe ratio (Meléndez et al.2008), K-giant abundances (Bensby et al.2010) and ages for the Milky Way bulge and thick disk suggest they formed at the same time. High dispersion gas at z ~ 1.5 can do this because it makes the young disk thick and the SF clumps big enough to drive fast secular evolution (Elmegreen et al.2006; Genzel et al.2008; Bournaud et al.2009). Local analogues might be present in dynamically young galaxies like BCDs (Elmegreen et al.2012). The high fraction of z ~ 1.5 galaxies with massive clumps suggests clump formation is a long-lived phase and that clump torques should last ~ 1 Gyr or more even if individual clumps come and go on shorter timescales. Clump formation may cease when stars finally dominate the disk mass (Cacciato et al. 2012).