Parametrizing the Stellar Haloes of Galaxies

Abstract

We study the stellar haloes of galaxies out to 70-100 kpc as a function of stellar mass and galaxy type by stacking aligned $r$ and $g$ band images from a sample of 45508 galaxies from SDSS DR9 in the redshift range $0.06\le z\le 0.1$ and in the mass range $10^{10.0}{M}_{\odot }<M_{\ast }<10^{11.4}{M}_{\odot }$r. We derive surface brightness profiles to a depth of almost ${\mu }_r\sim 32{\mathrm{mag}\mathrm{arcsec}}^{-2}$. We find that the ellipticity of the stellar halo is a function of galaxy stellar mass and that the haloes of high concentration ($C>2.6$) galaxies are more elliptical than those of low concentration ($C<2.6$) galaxies. The $g$-$r$ colour profile of high concentration galaxies reveals that the $g$-$r$ colour of the stellar population in the stellar halo is bluer than in the main galaxy, and the colour of the stellar halo is redder for higher mass galaxies. We further demonstrate that the full two-dimensional surface intensity distribution of our galaxy stacks can only be fit through multi-component Sérsic models. Using the fraction of light in the outer component of the models as a proxy for the fraction of accreted stellar light, we show that this fraction is a function of stellar mass and galaxy type. For high concentration galaxies, the fraction of accreted stellar light rises from $30\%$ to $70\%$ for galaxies in the stellar mass range from $10^{10.0}{M}_{\odot }$ to $10^{11.4}{M}_{\odot }$. The fraction of accreted light is much smaller in low concentration systems, increasing from $2\%$ to $25\%$ over the same mass range. This work provides important constraints for the theoretical understanding of the formation of stellar haloes of galaxies.

Submitted to MNRAS, 18 pages, 19 figures

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