Understanding Galaxy Formation and Evolution

The old dream of integrating into one the study of micro and macrocosmos is now a reality. Cosmology, astrophysics, and particle physics intersect in a scenario (but still not a theory) of cosmic structure formation and evolution called Lambda Cold Dark Matter (LCDM) model. This scenario emerged mainly to explain the origin of galaxies. In these lecture notes, I first present a review of the main galaxy properties, highlighting the questions that any theory of galaxy formation should explain. Then, the cosmological framework and the main aspects of primordial perturbation generation and evolution are pedagogically detached. Next, I focus on the ``dark side'' of galaxy formation, presenting a review on LCDM halo assembling and properties, and on the main candidates for non-baryonic dark matter. It is shown how the nature of elemental particles can influence on the features of galaxies and their systems. Finally, the complex processes of baryon dissipation inside the non-linearly evolving CDM halos, formation of disks and spheroids, and transformation of gas into stars are briefly described, remarking on the possibility of a few driving factors and parameters able to explain the main body of galaxy properties. A summary and a discussion of some of the issues and open problems of the LCDM paradigm are given in the final part of these notes.Comment: 50 pages, 10 low-resolution figures (for normal-resolution, DOWNLOAD THE PAPER (PDF, 1.9 Mb) FROM http://www.astroscu.unam.mx/~avila/avila.pdf). Lectures given at the IV Mexican School of Astrophysics, July 18-25, 2005 (submitted to the Editors on March 15, 2006

Elasticity and Petri nets

Digital electronic systems typically use synchronous clocks and primarily assume fixed duration of their operations to simplify the design process. Time elastic systems can be constructed either by replacing the clock with communication handshakes (asynchronous version) or by augmenting the clock with a synchronous version of a handshake (synchronous version). Time elastic systems can tolerate static and dynamic changes in delays (asynchronous case) or latencies (synchronous case) of operations that can be used for modularity, ease of reuse and better power-delay trade-off. This paper describes methods for the modeling, performance analysis and optimization of elastic systems using Marked Graphs and their extensions capable of describing behavior with early evaluation. The paper uses synchronous elastic systems (aka latency-tolerant systems) for illustrating the use of Petri nets, however, most of the methods can be applied without changes (except changing the delay model associated with events of the system) to asynchronous elastic systems.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Astronomical Distance Determination in the Space Age: Secondary Distance Indicators

The formal division of the distance indicators into primary and secondary leads to difficulties in description of methods which can actually be used in two ways: with, and without the support of the other methods for scaling. Thus instead of concentrating on the scaling requirement we concentrate on all methods of distance determination to extragalactic sources which are designated, at least formally, to use for individual sources. Among those, the Supernovae Ia is clearly the leader due to its enormous success in determination of the expansion rate of the Universe. However, new methods are rapidly developing, and there is also a progress in more traditional methods. We give a general overview of the methods but we mostly concentrate on the most recent developments in each field, and future expectations. © 2018, The Author(s)