Mathematics – Logic
Scientific paper
Jan 2011
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2011aas...21732304z&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #217, #323.04; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 43, 2011
Mathematics
Logic
Scientific paper
Accreted stellar halos are a natural consequence of galaxy formation in a Lambda-CDM Universe, and contain unique fossil records of hierarchical galaxy formation. The properties of local Milky Way halo stars, however, suggest that the Galaxy's halo is composed of at least two distinct stellar populations, each exhibiting different spatial distributions, orbits, and metallicities. This observed dichotomy is the result of the assembly history of the halo, which likely formed through a process more complex than pure hierarchical accretions. In this talk I will describe the formation of stellar halos surrounding Milky Way-massed disk galaxies simulated using high-resolution cosmological Smooth Particle Hydrodynamics + N-Body simulations. We find that two competing physical processes - accretion of dwarf galaxies and in situ star formation - contribute to the formation of every stellar halo. While the outer regions (r > 20 kpc) of the halos were assembled solely through the accretion and disruption of satellites, in situ star formation supplements accretion in the formation of inner halos. The relative contribution of each stellar population to a halo is shown to be a function of a galaxy's merging history. Galaxies with recent mergers, like M31, will host relatively few in situ stars, while galaxies with more quiescent recent histories, like the Milky Way, will likely have a larger population of such stars. We show how the chemical abundance trends ([Fe/H] vs. [alpha/Fe]) of accreted and in situ stars diverge at the high [Fe/H] end of the metallicity distribution function, and discuss how such trends can be used to study and identify the observable imprints of the Milky Way's formation history.
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