Speaker
Description
In this talk I will briefly discuss the present state of the field of galaxy evolution and share the results of opinion polls conducted at the 2021 European Astronomical Society meeting and the 2025 International Astronomical Union meeting. These polls illustrate the significant challenges both observers and theorists/simulators are currently facing. In sight of these apparent limitations I propose a simple approach to study galaxy evolution relying on growth models tested here on Planet earth. The Gamma growth pattern (which combines a power law growth and an exponential decline), a widely used parameterization across diverse scientific fields (ranging from biology to economics) and scales (from bacterial colonies to the spread of infectious diseases), serves to depict/study growth across many disciplines. In this presentation, I put forth the idea that this same Gamma growth pattern can be broadly applied to describe the cosmic star formation rate density, the mass accretion histories of dark matter halos, and the evolution of the Galaxy Stellar Mass Function (GSMF). Many of those results have been published recently to Katsianis et al. 2025. The simplicity, minimal parameters, lack of resolution effects, multidisciplinary approach and the ability to link the smallest and largest scales of star formation provided by our methodology, offers a surprising perspective on the Physics of galaxies that I am looking forward to share in the 3rd Shanghai Assembly on Structure formation meeting.
