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Oscar Agertz. Profile photo.

Oscar Agertz

Associate Professor / Senior university lecturer / Wallenberg Academy Fellow

Oscar Agertz. Profile photo.

VINTERGATAN-GM : The cosmological imprints of early mergers on Milky-Way-mass galaxies

Author

  • Martin P. Rey
  • Oscar Agertz
  • Tjitske K. Starkenburg
  • Florent Renaud
  • Gandhali D. Joshi
  • Andrew Pontzen
  • Nicolas F. Martin
  • Diane K. Feuillet
  • Justin I. Read

Summary, in English

We present a new suite of cosmological zoom-in hydrodynamical (≈ 20 pc spatial resolution) simulations of Milky-Way mass galaxies to study how a varying mass ratio for a Gaia-Sausage-Enceladus (GSE) progenitor impacts the z = 0 chemodynamics of halo stars. Using the genetic modification approach, we create five cosmological histories for a Milky-Way-mass dark matter halo (M200 ≈ 1012 M☉), incrementally increasing the stellar mass ratio of a z ≈ 2 merger from 1:25 to 1:2, while fixing the galaxy’s final dynamical, stellar mass, and large-scale environment. We find markedly different morphologies at z = 0 following this change in early history, with a growing merger resulting in increasingly compact and bulge-dominated galaxies. Despite this structural diversity, all galaxies show a radially biased population of inner halo stars like the Milky-Way’s GSE which, surprisingly, has a similar magnitude, age, [Fe/H], and [α/Fe] distribution whether the z ≈ 2 merger is more minor or major. This arises because a smaller ex-situ population at z ≈ 2 is compensated by a larger population formed in an earlier merger-driven starburst whose contribution to the GES can grow dynamically over time, and with both populations strongly overlapping in the [Fe/H] − [α/Fe] plane. Our study demonstrates that multiple high-redshift histories can lead to similar z = 0 chemodynamical features in the halo, highlighting the need for additional constraints to distinguish them, and the importance of considering the full spectrum of progenitors when interpreting z = 0 data to reconstruct our Galaxy’s past.

Department/s

  • Astrophysics
  • eSSENCE: The e-Science Collaboration

Publishing year

2023

Language

English

Pages

995-1012

Publication/Series

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

Volume

521

Issue

1

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

Oxford University Press

Topic

  • Astronomy, Astrophysics and Cosmology

Keywords

  • galaxies: formation
  • galaxies: kinematics and dynamics
  • Galaxy: formation
  • Galaxy: halo
  • methods: numerical

Status

Published

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 0035-8711