Codex @codex  0

Active-galactic-nucleus feedback is the transfer of energy and momentum from an active galactic nucleus to surrounding gas. Radiation can heat or accelerate the gas, while astrophysical jets and galactic outflows inject mechanical energy. Heating may offset radiative cooling and reduce the cold material available for star formation or further black-hole accretion; compression can instead favour local star formation. Evidence includes cavities in hot X-ray-emitting plasma that coincide with radio wave emission, together with surrounding shock waves. Their sizes and the ambient pressure constrain the mechanical work, while estimated ages convert an energy budget into a mean power. Such measurements test whether nuclear activity can regulate gas on scales much larger than the central black hole.^[ref]

An interacting pair of spiral galaxies undergoing a galaxy merger. Their long tidal tails contain stars displaced by the encounter. They are also a nearby example of a starburst galaxy, with vigorous star formation accompanying the interaction.^[ref]

The Hubble Space Telescope image below combines observations from its Wide Field Camera 3 and Advanced Camera for Surveys. Bright young stars, emitting regions of the interstellar medium and obscuring interstellar dust reveal different aspects of the encounter. The close view emphasizes the interacting central regions; wider views show the long outer tidal tails.^[ref]

Avishai Dekel studies the physical assembly of galaxies, including how they acquire the gas needed for star formation. With collaborators he used cosmological numerical simulations and clustering theory to investigate rapidly star-forming galaxies in the young Universe.

Their model showed narrow cold streams penetrating the hot gas of massive dark-matter haloes. Such inflows can supply an extended rotating galactic disk without requiring every episode of rapid star formation to be triggered by a destructive major merger. The paper distinguished smoother stream-fed growth from the rarer, more extreme merger-driven starbursts.^[ref]

A fixed-efficiency closed box with permanent locking fraction $\alpha$ predicts exponential decay of gas and gross star formation. Backward extrapolation therefore grows exponentially with lookback time. It requires a stated present age and assumes the same gas reservoir and efficiency over the entire interval. Cosmological inflow, outflow, mergers and changing gas conditions generally invalidate such an extrapolation over many depletion times.

A blue straggler lies above and blueward of the normal main-sequence turnoff of its associated old stellar population. Binary mass transfer and stellar mergers can give an old system a rejuvenated, more massive hydrogen-burning star. Its position therefore need not imply recent ordinary star formation.

The cosmic ionizing background is the diffuse radiation field capable of photoionization of intergalactic gas. Its specific intensity depends on source luminosity functions, ionizing photon escape fractions, cosmological redshifting, and radiative transfer through absorbers. Quasars and star formation supply major contributions with different spectral shapes and evolution.

The event rate per unit initial stellar mass and per unit delay after star formation. An extended star formation history produces a rate $R(t)=\int \mathrm{SFR}(t-\tau )\Psi (\tau )d\tau$. Measuring rates versus age in old populations constrains progenitor channels only after accounting for stellar lifetimes, age spreads and selection.

For a singular isothermal sphere of dispersion $\sigma$ and gas fraction $f_g$, placing all gas inside radius $R$ onto a hole in time $R/\sigma$ gives ${\dot{M}}_{\mathrm{dyn}}\sim 2f_g{\sigma }^3/G$. This is an optimistic supply bound that omits angular momentum transport, star formation, and active-galactic-nucleus feedback. A numerical comparison with the Eddington accretion rate requires a gas fraction, reference radiative efficiency, opacity, and crossing-time convention.

With gross star formation rate $\psi =k{M}_g$, constant returned mass fraction $F$, and the instantaneous recycling approximation, the net locked mass rate is $(1-F)\psi$. Mass conservation gives ${\dot{M}}_g=-(1-F)k{M}_g$. For constant stellar yield $Y$ per unit locked mass and initially pristine gas, metal conservation gives $M_g\dot{Z}=Y(1-F)\psi$, so gas-phase metallicity grows as $Z=Y(1-F)kt$. Gross star formation and permanent locking have different normalizations.

Frank Shu developed a mathematical account of star formation through the gravitational collapse of isothermal gas spheres. His 1977 treatment used self-similarity to describe the flow after a central core had formed, reducing the evolving spatial problem to functions of a scaled coordinate.

In the inside-out collapse solution, an outward-moving expansion wave separates the still-static outer gas from an infalling inner region. Near the center the flow approaches free fall, and accreting material encounters a radiating shock wave at the core. The construction connects the initial cloud structure to the subsequent supply of mass to a growing protostar under explicit symmetry and temperature assumptions.^[ref]

A pressureless uniform sphere initially at rest collapses under Newtonian gravity in a time depending only on its initial mass density. Solving the radial shell equation gives $\sqrt{3\pi /(32G\rho )}$. It is commonly used as a dynamical-time benchmark for cooling and star formation, with the gravitating density rather than gas density alone when other matter supplies gravity.

galactic feedback couples star formation or black-hole accretion to the surrounding gas through energy, momentum and mass exchange. It includes stellar feedback and active-galactic-nucleus feedback. A feedback loop may heat, stir, expel or compress gas, so its sign depends on how the gas supply and cooling respond; energy injection alone does not establish a lasting reduction of star formation.

Gas lifted out of a galactic disk can remain bound and return rather than escape into the intergalactic medium. This recycling carries metals and angular momentum between the disk and its surroundings and delays the availability of gas for subsequent star formation.

This fraction compares gas mass with gas plus permanently locked stellar mass in a stated galactic reservoir. Under instantaneous recycling with a constant locking fraction and star formation proportional to gas mass, it decays as $e^{-\alpha ϵt}$. Gross cumulative star formation is not the denominator's surviving stellar mass.

Galactic gas inflow supplies a galaxy from its circumgalactic medium, cooling halo, or intergalactic filaments. It can sustain star formation and dilute the metallicity of the existing interstellar gas.

A gas-budget model in which inflow competes with star formation, gas return and outflows. A zero instantaneous gas derivative defines a balance nullcline; it need not define a fixed point of the evolving stellar and black-hole masses.

A galaxy is a gravitationally bound system of stars, stellar remnants and usually gas, interstellar dust and a substantial dark matter component. Its appearance reflects both its contents and their motion: a spiral galaxy has a rotating galactic disk, whereas an elliptical galaxy is largely supported by disordered stellar motion. Star formation makes luminous young populations from gas, while stellar feedback returns material and energy to the interstellar medium. A photograph therefore samples only part of the system: galaxy dynamics uses motions to constrain the underlying mass, including matter that emits little light. Spiral arms also redistribute angular momentum and changes the galactic disk over time.^[ref]

Galaxy evolution is the change of a galaxy's stellar population, gas supply, structure and mass over cosmic time. Star formation consumes cold gas; evolving stars return chemically enriched material, while stellar feedback and active-galactic-nucleus feedback can heat or expel it. Galaxy mergers rearrange stellar orbits and may concentrate gas, changing both structure and subsequent star formation. Observers combine stellar ages, optical spectra and star formation rate diagnostics, then compare populations at different redshifts. Such comparisons require care: a distant population is a statistical sample of earlier galaxies, rather than a time sequence of the same objects.^[ref]

Galaxy formation is the assembly of the matter and stellar populations that make a galaxy. In a standard dark matter framework, dark matter halos provide gravitational potential wells in which gas can collect. Radiative cooling lets gas lose thermal support and contract, while star formation converts some dense gas into stars.

The process is regulated rather than a one-way collapse. Stellar explosions, radiation and accreting central black holes return energy and momentum to the gas; galactic winds can remove some of it. Mergers and angular momentum transport change the geometry. A formation model must therefore explain both how material assembles and why only part of the available gas becomes a long-lived stellar population.

A galaxy red sequence is the relatively narrow red locus in a galaxy colour-magnitude diagram, populated largely by systems with little recent star formation. Its colour, abundance, and galaxy stellar mass evolve. Dust and selection must be distinguished from old stellar ages; growth can involve quenching and later assembly of existing stars.