Simulations of the accreted stellar halos of low-mass field galaxies

Abstract

We predict the properties of stellar halos in galaxies of present-day virial mass $10^8<M_{200}<10^{12}{\mathrm{M}}_{\odot }$ by combining the GALFORM semi-analytic model of galaxy formation, the COCO cosmological N-body simulation, and the STINGS particle tagging technique. Galaxies in low mass halos have a wide range of stellar halo properties. Their diversity is much greater at fixed stellar mass than fixed virial mass. In the least massive DM halos capable of supporting galaxy formation, accreted mass fractions are < 10 per cent, and the typical density profile of accreted stars is similar to that of stars formed in situ. In low mass galaxies, the radial scale lengths of accreted stellar halos are smaller than those of stellar disks formed in situ, but the accreted component is still diffuse, not bulge-like. At the scale of galaxies like M33, the surface density of accreted stars exceeds that of the in situ component at ~15kpc; the accreted surface density at this radius is $3.5\lesssim {\log }_{10}{M}_{\star }/{\mathrm{M}}_{\odot }\mathrm{kp}{\mathrm{c}}^{-2}\lesssim 6$, varying systematically with virial mass. We compare our predictions to observations and other cosmological simulations. A small but significant number of $\sim 10^{12}{\mathrm{M}}_{\odot }$ halos with exceptionally inefficient star formation -- "failed Milky Ways" -- are more prominent in our model than others; the true abundance of this population is a potential constraint on galaxy formation physics and could be measured by low surface brightness surveys targeting field galaxies with M33-like stellar mass. The stellar particle data for our simulation is publicly available.

MNRAS accepted. 25 pages, 21 figures (appendix 5 pages, 4 figures). See https://github.com/nthu-ga/stings-data for public simulation data (also Appendix A)

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