This thesis addresses two of the central processes which underpin the formation of galaxies: the formation of stars and the injection of energy into the interstellar medium from supernovae, called feedback. In her work Claudia Lagos has completely overhauled the treatment of these processes in simulations of galaxy formation. Her thesis makes two major breakthroughs, and represents the first major steps forward in these areas in more than a decade. Her work has enabled, for the first time, predictions to be made which can be compared against new observations which probe the neutral gas content of galaxies, opening up a completely novel way to constrain the models. The treatment of feedback from supernovae, and how this removes material from the interstellar medium, is also likely to have a lasting impact on the field. Claudia Lagos Ph.D. thesis was nominated by the Institute for Computational Cosmology at Durham University as an outstanding Ph.D. thesis 2012.

Bulges lie at the heart of most galaxies, the building blocks of our universe. With a selection of reviews and topical presentations, IAU Symposium 245 provides an up-to-date overview of our knowledge on galaxy bulges, and a concise introduction to all current research on the subject. The structure, dynamics, and stellar populations of galaxy bulges, both near and far, are analysed through state-of-the-art observations. The leading models for the formation and evolution of galaxy bulges are described in detail, and the constraints observations put on these are dissected. Particular emphasis is placed on exploring evidence for both hierarchical merging and secular processes. Special attention is also devoted to disentangling the complex web relating galaxy bulges and central supermassive black holes, and on the lessons learned from our exquisite knowledge of the bulge of our own Milky Way. This volume is the best one-stop reference on galaxy bulges currently available.

A coherent introduction for researchers in astronomy, particle physics, and cosmology on the formation and evolution of galaxies.

Galaxies, along with their underlying dark matter halos, constitute the building blocks of structure in the Universe. Of all fundamental forces, gravity is the dominant one that drives the evolution of structures from small density seeds at early times to the galaxies we see today. The interactions among myriads of stars, or dark matter particles, in a gravitating structure produce a system with fascinating connotations to thermodynamics, with some analogies and some fundamental differences. Ignacio Ferreras presents a concise introduction to extragalactic astrophysics, with emphasis on stellar dynamics, and the growth of density fluctuations in an expanding Universe. Additional chapters are devoted to smaller systems (stellar clusters) and larger ones (galaxy clusters). Fundamentals of Galaxy Dynamics, Formation and Evolution is written for advanced undergraduates and beginning postgraduate students, providing a useful tool to get up to speed in a starting research career. Some of the derivations for the most important results are presented in detail to enable students appreciate the beauty of maths as a tool to understand the workings of galaxies. Each chapter includes a set of problems to help the student advance with the material.

This volume presents lectures of the XI Canary Islands Winter School of Astrophysics written by experts in the field.

The last 50 years have seen a tremendous progress in the research on quasars. From a time when quasars were unforeseen oddities, we have come to a view that considers quasars as active galactic nuclei, with nuclear activity a coming-of-age experienced by most or all galaxies in their evolution. We have passed from a few tens of known quasars of the early 1970s to the 500,000 listed in the catalogue of the Data Release 14 of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. Not surprisingly, accretion processes on the central black holes in the nuclei of galaxies — the key concept in our understanding of quasars and active nuclei in general — have gained an outstanding status in present-day astrophysics. Accretion produces a rich spectrum of phenomena in all bands of the electromagnetic spectrum. The power output of highly-accreting quasars has impressive effects on their host galaxies. All the improvement in telescope light gathering and in computing power notwithstanding, we still miss a clear connection between observational properties and theory for quasars, as provided, for example, by the H-R diagram for stars. We do not yet have a complete self-consistent view of nuclear activity with predictive power, as we do for main-sequence stellar sources. At the same time quasars offer many “windows open onto the unknown". On small scales, quasar properties depend on phenomena very close to the black hole event horizon. On large scales, quasars may effect evolution of host galaxies and their circum-galactic environments. Quasars’ potential to map the matter density of the Universe and help reconstruct the Universe’s spacetime geometry is still largely unexploited. The times are ripe for a critical assessment of our present knowledge of quasars as accreting black holes and of their evolution across the cosmic time. The foremost aim of this research topic is to review and contextualize the main observational scenarios following an empirical approach, to present and discuss the accretion scenario, and then to analyze how a closer connection between theory and observation can be achieved, identifying those aspects of our understanding that are still on a shaky terrain and are therefore uncertain knowledge. This research topic covers topics ranging from the nearest environment of the black hole, to the environment of the host galaxies of active nuclei, and to the quasars as markers of the large scale structure and of the geometry of spacetime of the Universe. The spatial domains encompass the accretion disk, the emission and absorption regions, circum-nuclear starbursts, the host galaxy and its interaction with other galaxies. Systematic attention is devoted to some key problems that remain outstanding and are clearly not yet solved: the existence of two quasar classes, radio quiet and radio loud, and in general, the systematic contextualization of quasar properties the properties of the central black hole, the dynamics of the accretion flow in the inner parsecs and the origin of the accretion matter, the quasars’ small and large scale environment, the feedback processes produced by the black hole into the host galaxy, quasar evolutionary patterns from seed black holes to the present-day Universe, and the use of quasars as cosmological standard candles. The timing is appropriate as we are now witnessing a growing body of results from major surveys in the optical, UV X, near and far IR, and radio spectral domains. Radio instrumentation has been upgraded to linear detector — a change that resembles the introduction of CCDs for optical astronomy — making it possible to study radio-quiet quasars at radio frequencies. Herschel and ALMA are especially suited to study the circum-nuclear star formation processes. The new generation of 3D magnetohydrodynamical models offers the prospective of a full physical modeling of the whole quasar emitting regions. At the same time, on the forefront of optical astronomy, applications of adaptive optics to long-slit spectroscopy is yielding unprecedented results on high redshift quasars. Other measurement techniques like 2D and photometric reverberation mapping are also yielding an unprecedented amount of data thanks to dedicated experiments and instruments. Thanks to the instrumental advances, ever growing computing power as well as the coming of age of statistical and analysis techniques, the smallest spatial scales are being probed at unprecedented resolution for wide samples of quasars. On large scales, feedback processes are going out of the realm of single-object studies and are entering into the domain of issues involving efficiency and prevalence over a broad range of cosmic epochs. The Research Topic "Quasars at all Cosmic Epochs" collects a large fraction of the contributions presented at a meeting held in Padova, sponsored jointly by the National Institute for Astrophysics, the Padova Astronomical Observatory, the Department of Physics and Astronomy of the University of Padova, and the Instito de Astrofísica de Andalucía (IAA) of the Consejo Superiór de Investigación Cientifica (CSIC). The meeting has been part of the events meant to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the foundation of the Padova Observatory.

The?eld of cosmology is currently undergoing a revolution driven by d- matic observational progress and by novel theoretical scenarios imported from particle physics. In particular, two most remarkable results were recently - tained from measurements of the angular spectrum of the?uctuations in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation providing convincing e- dence that the Universe is nearly?at and from the Hubble diagram of distant supernovae indicating an accelerating expansion rate, which implies the ex- tence of some dark energy as the dominant component of the Universe. Indeed, the next decade will bene?t from high quality data on cosmology from diff- ent major experiments and observatories, with a particular important contri- tion from space missions such as WMAP, Planck Surveyor, XMM and SNAP among others. On one side, cosmologists believe they understand the origin of themain ingredients which allowacoherent description of theUniverse from its very earlyphase, namely in?ation, to the actual epoch which accounts for theoriginof theprimordial?uctuations, allowing predictions of their - prints inthe cosmicmicrowave skyandleading to the large scale structure of theUniverse as observed. Ontheother side, theexistence of a non-zero vacuum density is certainly one of the most astonishing results of modern f- damental physics. Understanding its nature andits originwill be one of the major directions of researchinthe following years. In view of the intensive current activity inthe?eld, aSchoolfully dedicated to these both sides in cosmology was timely.