Related papers: Tracing Galaxy Formation with Stellar Halos I: Met…
We predict the properties of stellar halos in galaxies of present-day virial mass $10^8 < M_{200} < 10^{12} {\rm M_\odot}$ by combining the GALFORM semi-analytic model of galaxy formation, the COCO cosmological N-body simulation, and the…
We study the formation of the Milky Way's halo in a $\Lambda$CDM cosmology by scaling down a high resolution simulation of the formation of a cluster of galaxies. We determine how much phase-space substructure is left over from the objects…
We analyze an adaptive mesh refinement hydrodynamic cosmological simulation of a Milky Way-sized galaxy to study the cold gas in the halo. HI observations of the Milky Way and other nearby spirals have revealed the presence of such gas in…
Modern theories of galaxy formation predict that the Galactic stellar halo was hierarchically assembled from the accretion and disruption of smaller systems. This hierarchical assembly is expected to produce a high degree of structure in…
We apply a semi-analytic galaxy formation model to two high resolution cosmological N-body simulations to investigate analogues of the Milky Way system. We select these according to observed properties of the Milky Way rather than by halo…
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…
As galaxies form hierarchically, larger satellites may accrete alongside smaller companions in group infall events. This coordinated accretion is likely to have left signatures in the Milky Way's stellar halo at the present day. Our goal is…
We present an analysis of the radial age gradients for the stellar halos of five Milky Way mass-sized systems simulated as part of the Aquarius Project. The halos show a diversity of age trends, reflecting their different assembly…
We study the formation histories and present-day structure of satellite galaxies formed in a high resolution hydrodynamic simulation of a Milky Way-like galaxy. The simulated satellites span nearly 4 orders of magnitude in luminosity but…
One of the main challenges facing standard hierarchical structure formation models is that the predicted abundance of galactic subhalos with circular velocities of 10-30 km/s is an order of magnitude higher than the number of satellites…
Late accretion models for formation of the Galactic halo require that many Galactic satellite galaxies have been cannibalised into the halo field. Comparison of the metallicity and age distribution function of stars in the surviving…
Recent observational and theoretical work suggests that the formation of the Galactic stellar halo involved both dissipative processes and the accretion of subfragments. With present data, the fraction of the halo for which an accretion…
We use cosmological hydrodynamical simulations of Milky-Way-mass galaxies from the FIRE project to evaluate various strategies for estimating the mass of a galaxy's stellar halo from deep, integrated-light images. We find good agreement…
In hierarchical structure formation, dark matter halos that merge with larger halos can persist as subhalos. These subhalos are likely hosts of visible galaxies. While the dense halo environment rapidly strips subhalos of their dark mass,…
Near-field observations may provide tight constraints - i.e. "boundary conditions" - on any model of structure formation in the Universe. Detailed observational data have long been available for the Milky Way (e.g. Freeman $\&$…
We investigate the spatial distribution of galactic satellites in high resolution simulations of structure formation in the LCDM model: the Aquarius dark matter simulations of individual halos and the Millennium II simulation of a large…
To unravel the formation history of the Milky Way, we estimate the accretion times of six phase-space substructures in the stellar halo, using the orbital frequencies toward two spatial directions ($r, \phi$) in spherical coordinates. These…
The existence of stellar halos around galaxies is a natural prediction of the hierarchical nature of the LambdaCDM model. Recent observations of Milky Way-like galaxies have revealed a wide range in stellar halo mass, including cases with…
Galactic halos are known to grow hierarchically, inside out. This implies a correlation between the infall lookback time of satellites and their binding energy. Cosmological simulations predict a linear relation between the infall lookback…
$\Lambda$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.…