The Two Phases of Galaxy Formation
  Cosmological simulations of galaxy formation appear to show a two-phase
character with a rapid early phase at z>2 during which in-situ stars are formed
within the galaxy from infalling cold gas followed by an extended phase since
z<3 during which ex-situ stars are primarily accreted. In the latter phase
massive systems grow considerably in mass and radius by accretion of smaller
satellite stellar systems formed at quite early times (z>3) outside of the
virial radius of the forming central galaxy. These tentative conclusions are
obtained from high resolution re-simulations of 39 individual galaxies in a
full cosmological context with present-day virial halo masses ranging from 7e11
M_sun h^-1 < M_vir < 2.7e13 M_sun h^-1 and central galaxy masses between 4.5e10
M_sun h^-1 < M_* < 3.6e11 M_sun h^-1. The simulations include the effects of a
uniform UV background, radiative cooling, star formation and energetic feedback
from SNII. The importance of stellar accretion increases with galaxy mass and
towards lower redshift. In our simulations lower mass galaxies ($M_* < 9e10
M_sun h^-1) accrete about 60 per cent of their present-day stellar mass. High
mass galaxy ($M_* > 1.7e11 M_sun h^-1) assembly is dominated by accretion and
merging with about 80 per cent of the stars added by the present-day. In
general the simulated galaxies approximately double their mass since z=1. For
massive systems this mass growth is not accompanied by significant star
formation. The majority of the in-situ created stars is formed at z>2,
primarily out of cold gas flows. We recover the observational result of
archaeological downsizing, where the most massive galaxies harbor the oldest
stars. We find that this is not in contradiction with hierarchical structure
formation. Most stars in the massive galaxies are formed early on in smaller
structures, the galaxies themselves are assembled late.
