%0 Generic
%A Göller, Junia Aletta Beatrix
%C Heidelberg
%D 2025
%F heidok:37007
%R 10.11588/heidok.00037007
%T Stars in the Making: Probing Star Formation and its Effects in Simulated Galaxies
%U https://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/volltextserver/37007/
%X Up to today, the formation of stars in the broader galactic context remains poorly understood. The role of the external forces – such as ram-pressure stripping – and internal properties of galaxies – including the gravitational potential and largescale gas dynamics – are a topic of active debate. In this thesis, we study star formation across two contrasting galactic environments: jellyfish galaxies and the Milky Way. These example systems allow us to investigate both the extragalactic and intragalactic mechanisms affecting star formation.  In the first part of this thesis we use the magnetohydrodynamical cosmological simulation TNG50 to probe a sample of jellyfish galaxies for their star formation, asking if gas compression from ram-pressure increases the star formation rate (SFR) in such galaxies, as some observations suggest. We find no such enhancement in the general population, but instead for the majority of jellyfish see a phase of enhanced SFR in their individual evolution.  In the second part we introduce the Rhea simulation suite, a set of elaborate hydrodynamical simulations conducted by us to model the Milky Way galaxy. We study the importance of the galactic gravitational potential for star formation, and find the bar to have the strongest influence, as it changes the location and properties of star-forming regions. A spiral arm potential merely reorganizes gas in the galaxy and thus increases SFR in its potential wells.  We also find the extend of the star-forming disk to divide the galactic stellar disk into a region dominated by in-situ formed stars, and an outer migrator-dominated region. This duality, in our simulations, affects the stellar density distribution and thus the stellar galactic rotation curve. If no distinction is made between the two regions, the resulting velocity curve can mimic a cut-off in the galactic mass distribution.