Interacting and Merging Galaxies

Abstract

I will present a review of some of the many recent developments within the exciting and rapidly evolving field of Interacting and Merging Galaxies. I will touch both on observations and on theory, focussing on those aspects where galaxy evolution modelling may possibly contribute to our understanding. After briefly outlining the basic concepts and a few specific results of stellar- and gasdynamical modelling of galaxy -- galaxy mergers (Sect. 1) I choose three examples of interacting/merged galaxy pairs to discuss different aspects of mergers: tracing back the star formation history of the old merger remnant NGC 7252 (Sect. 2), the formation of young star clusters (Sect. 3) and dwarf galaxies (Sect. 4) in Antennae, and the molecular gas content of IR-UL galaxies on the example of Arp 220 (Sect. 5). I'll touch the interaction -- activity connection in Sect. 6 and report attempts to identify merger remnants among today's galaxies in Sect. 7. After few words on merger rates at present and in the past (Sect. 8), I'll close with a brief outlook.