Archive template help!

I was wondering if someone could explain to me how the author-{nicename}.php exactly works? Does WordPress create this file automatically per each user?

Futhermore, i would like to know if its possible to create multiple archive template pages for custom post types. My site currently has a custom post type of “Articles” and i would like to access an archive page that displays all archived articles (currently my archive page displays archives of the main posts only).

When i created my custom type i set the has_archive argument to true so im assuming wordpress is archiving all of my articles so now i just need to be able to access them.