Cosmological insights into the assembly of the radial and compact stellar halo of the Milky Way
Abstract
Recent studies using Gaia DR2 have identified a massive merger in the history of the Milky Way (MW) whose debris is markedly radial and counterrotating. This event, known as the Gaia-Enceladus/Gaia-Sausage (GE/GS), is also hypothesized to have built the majority of the inner stellar halo. We use the cosmological hydrodynamic simulation Illustris to place this merger in the context of galaxy assembly within . From 150 MW analogs, 80 \% have experienced at least one merger of similar mass and infall time as GE/GS. Within this sample, 37 have debris as radial as that of the GE/GS, which we dub the Ancient Radial Mergers (ARMs). Counterrotation is not rare among ARMs, with 43 \% having >40 \% of their debris in counterrotating orbits. However, the compactness inferred for the GE/GS debris, given its large β and its substantial contribution to the stellar halo, is more difficult to reproduce. The median radius of ARM debris is r*,deb 45kpc, while GE/GS is thought to be mostly contained within r 30 kpc. For most MW analogs, a few mergers are required to build the inner stellar halo, and ARM debris only accounts for 12 \% of inner accreted stars. Encouragingly, we find one ARM that is both compact and dominates the inner halo of its central, making it our best GE/GS analog. Interestingly, this merger deposits a significant number of stars (M*1.5 × 109 M) in the outer halo, suggesting that an undiscovered section of GE/GS may await detection.