The accreted stellar halo as a window on halo assembly in L* galaxies

Abstract

Theory and observations agree that the accreted stellar halos (ASHs) of Milky Way-like galaxies display significant scatter. I take advantage of this stochasticity to invert the link between halo assembly history (HAH) and ASH, using mock ASHs corresponding to 750 $\Lambda$CDM HAHs, sharing a final virial mass of $M_h(z=0)=10^{12.25}{M}_{\odot }$. Hosts with poor/rich ASHs assemble following orthogonal growth-patterns. Hosts with rich ASHs experience accretion events (AEs) with high virial mass ratios (HVMRs, $M_s/M_h\gtrsim 0.1$) at $0.5\lesssim z_{infall}\lesssim 1.5$, in a phase of fast growth. This maximizes the accreted stellar mass under the condition these satellites are disrupted by $z=0$. At similar times, hosts with poor ASHs grow slowly through minor mergers, with only very recent HVMR AEs: this results in a globally more abundant satellite population and in distinctive surviving massive satellites (stellar mass $\log M_{s,\ast }/M_{\odot }\gtrsim 9$). Several properties of the Milky Way are in agreement with the predictions of this framework for hosts with poor, concentrated ASHs, including: i) the recent infall of Sagittarius and Magellanic Clouds, ii) the likely higher-than-average concentration of its dark halo, iii) the signatures of fast chemical enrichment of a sizable fraction of its halo stellar populations.

accepted version, minor changes

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