Galaxies and Interstellar Medium

This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image shows the peculiar galaxy pair called Arp 116. Credit: NASA, ESA (https://www.spacetelescope.org/images/heic1213a/)

Galaxies are studied both from the observational point of view (especially in X-ray, optical and 21-cm line), and theoretically, with the aid of numerical simulations and analytical methods (stellar dynamics, potential theory). The main activities carried out at DIFA include the study of dynamics and kinematics, structure, scaling laws, Dark Matter halos, formation and evolution of elliptical, spiral and dwarf galaxies. Strictly related investigations concern the diffuse matter within galaxies and its relationships with the environment, in particular gas hydrodynamics, extraplanar gas, star formation, AGN and SN feedback, cooling flow models and their variants, the intracluster medium. Modified Newtonian dynamics (MOND) is also studied from a theoretical point of view, using both analytic and numerical methods.

Collaborations

• Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics (GER)
• Center for Astrophysics, Harvard & Smithsonian (USA)
• University of Florida (USA) 
• University of California, Riverside (USA)
• Massachusetts Institute of Technology (USA)
• Center for Astrophysics, High Energy Astrophysics Division (Cambridge, MA, USA)
• Department of Astrophysical Sciences (Princeton University, NJ, USA)
• Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics (Columbia University, NY, USA)
• Department of Physics and Astronomy (University of California Los Angeles, CA, USA)  
• INAF-OAS, Kapteyn Astronomical Institute (University of Groningen, NL)
• Rudolf Peierls Centre for Theoretical Physics (Oxford University, UK)

Funding

• UniBO
• PRIN-MIUR
• PRIN-INAF
• Rita Levi Montalcini-MIUR