Related papers: The Dual Origin of Stellar Halos
[Abridged] Motivated by upcoming data from astrometric and spectroscopic surveys of the Galaxy, we explore the chemical abundance properties and phase-space distributions in hierarchically-formed stellar halo simulations set in a LambdaCDM…
A simple, 1-equation, galaxy formation model is applied to both the halo merger tree derived from a high-resolution dissipationless cosmological simulation and to 1/4 million Monte-Carlo halo merger trees. The galaxy formation model…
$\Lambda$CDM cosmology predicts the hierarchical formation of galaxies which build up mass by merger events and accreting smaller systems. The stellar halo of the Milky Way has proven to be useful a tool for tracing this accretion history.…
We use the Aquarius simulation series to study the imprint of assembly history on the structure of Galaxy-mass cold dark matter halos. Our results confirm earlier work regarding the influence of mergers on the mass density profile and the…
We study the evolution of stellar mass in galaxies as a function of host halo mass, using the "MPA" and "Durham" semi-analytic models, implemented on the Millennium Run simulation. The results from both models are similar. We find that…
We study numerical simulations of satellite galaxy disruption in a potential resembling that of the Milky Way. Our goal is to assess whether a merger origin for the stellar halo would leave observable fossil structure in the phase-space…
We simulate the formation of a realistic disk galaxy within the hierarchical scenario of structure formation and study its internal properties to the present epoch. We compare results from a LambdaCDM simulation with a LambdaWDM (2keV)…
In the $\Lambda$CDM paradigm the Galactic stellar halo is predicted to harbor the accreted debris of smaller systems. To identify these systems, the H3 Spectroscopic Survey, combined with $Gaia$, is gathering 6D phase-space and chemical…
We use numerical simulations to examine the substructure within galactic and cluster mass halos that form within a hierarchical universe. Clusters are easily reproduced with a steep mass spectrum of thousands of substructure clumps that…
We study the merger histories of galaxy dark matter halos using a high resolution LCDM N-body simulation. Our merger trees follow ~17,000 halos with masses M_0 = (10^11--10^13) Msun at z=0 and track accretion events involving objects as…
The halo stars on highly radial orbits should inevitably pass the center regions of the Milky Way. Under the assumption that the stellar halo is in dynamical equilibrium and axisymmetric, we integrate the orbits of $\sim 10,000$ halo…
We predict the stellar mass -- halo mass (SMHM) relationship for dwarf galaxies, using simulated galaxies with peak halo masses of M$_{\rm peak} = 10^{11}$ M$_{\odot}$ down into the ultra-faint dwarf range to M$_{\rm peak} =$ 10$^7$…
We study stellar-halo formation using six Milky Way-mass galaxies in FIRE-2 cosmological zoom simulations. We find that $5-40\%$ of the outer ($50-300$ kpc) stellar halo in each system consists of $\textit{in-situ}$ stars that were born in…
Stellar halos may hold some of the best preserved fossils of the formation history of galaxies. They are a natural product of the merging processes that probably take place during the assembly of a galaxy, and hence may well be the most…
We compare the stellar masses of central and satellite galaxies predicted by three independent semianalytical models with observational results obtained from a large galaxy group catalogue constructed from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. In…
In the simplest scenario, disk galaxies form predominantly in halos with high angular momentum and quiet recent assembly history, whereas spheroids are the slowly-rotating remnants of repeated merging events. We explore these assumptions…
We investigate the influence of the initial proto-galaxies over-densities and masses on their evolution, to understand whether the internal properties of the proto-galactic haloes are sufficient to account for the varied properties of the…
Stellar shells are low surface brightness arcs of overdense stellar regions, extending to large galactocentric distances. In a companion study, we identified 39 shell galaxies in a sample of 220 massive ellipticals…
Satellite galaxies in galaxy clusters represent a significant fraction of the global galaxy population. Because of the unusual dense environment of clusters, their evolution is driven by different mechanisms than the ones affecting field or…
The Milky Way's stellar halo, which extends to $>100$ kpc, encodes the evolutionary history of our Galaxy. However, most studies of the halo to date have been limited to within a few kpc of the Sun. Here, we characterize differences between…