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تسجيل مستخدم جديدThe Role of Dwarf Galaxies in Building Large Stellar Halos
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Evan N. Kirby
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The hierarchical theory of galaxy formation rests on the idea that smaller galactic structures merge to form the galaxies that we see today. The past decade has provided remarkable observational support for this scenario, driven in part by advances in spectroscopic instrumentation. Multi-object spectroscopy enabled the discovery of kinematically cold substructures around the Milky Way and M31 that are likely the debris of disrupting satellites. Improvements in high-resolution spectroscopy have produced key evidence that the abundance patterns of the Milky Way halo and its dwarf satellites can be explained by Galactic chemical evolution models based on hierarchical assembly. These breakthroughs have depended almost entirely on observations of nearby stars in the Milky Way and luminous red giant stars in M31 and Local Group dwarf satellites. In the next decade, extremely large telescopes will allow observations far down the luminosity function in the known dwarf galaxies, and they will enable observations of individual stars far out in the Galactic halo. The chemical abundance census now available for the Milky Way will become possible for our nearest neighbor, M31. Velocity dispersion measurements now available in M31 will become possible for systems beyond the Local Group such as Sculptor and M81 Group galaxies. Detailed studies of a greater number of individual stars in a greater number of spiral galaxies and their satellites will test hierarchical assembly in new ways because dynamical and chemical evolution models predict different outcomes for halos of different masses in different environments.
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We present a new model for the formation of stellar halos in dwarf galaxies. We demonstrate that the stars and star clusters that form naturally in the inner regions of dwarfs are expected to migrate from the gas rich, star forming centre to join the
stellar spheroid. For dwarf galaxies, this process could be the dominant source of halo stars. The effect is caused by stellar feedback-driven bulk motions of dense gas which, by causing potential fluctuations in the inner regions of the halo, couple to all collisionless components. This effect has been demonstrated to generate cores in otherwise cuspy cold dark matter profiles and is particularly effective in dwarf galaxy haloes. It can build a stellar spheroid with larger ages and lower metallicities at greater radii without requiring an outside-in formation model. Globular cluster-type star clusters can be created in the galactic ISM and then migrate to the spheroid on 100thinspace Myr timescales. Once outside the inner regions they are less susceptible to tidal disruption and are thus long lived; clusters on wider orbits may be easily unbound from the dwarf to join the halo of a larger galaxy during a merger. A simulated dwarf galaxy ($text{M}_{vir}simeq10^{9}text{M}_{odot}$ at $z=5$) is used to examine this gravitational coupling to dark matter and stars.
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lding blocks must have been vastly different from the surviving dwarfs. The discovery of an extremely iron-poor star (S1020549) in the Sculptor dwarf galaxy based on a medium-resolution spectrum cast some doubt on this conclusion. However, verification of the iron-deficiency and measurements of additional elements, such as the alpha-element Mg, are mandatory for demonstrating that the same type of stars produced the metals found in dwarf galaxies and the Galactic halo. Only then can dwarf galaxy stars be conclusively linked to early stellar halo assembly. Here we report high-resolution spectroscopic abundances for 11 elements in S1020549, confirming the iron abundance of less than 1/4000th that of the Sun, and showing that the overall abundance pattern mirrors that seen in low-metallicity halo stars, including the alpha-elements. Such chemical similarity indicates that the systems destroyed to form the halo billions of years ago were not fundamentally different from the progenitors of present-day dwarfs, and suggests that the early chemical enrichment of all galaxies may be nearly identical.
The stellar halos of galaxies encode their accretion histories. In particular, the median metallicity of a halo is determined primarily by the mass of the most massive accreted object. We use hydrodynamical cosmological simulations from the APOSTLE p
roject to study the connection between the stellar mass, the metallicity distribution, and the stellar age distribution of a halo and the identity of its most massive progenitor. We find that the stellar populations in an accreted halo typically resemble the old stellar populations in a present-day dwarf galaxy with a stellar mass $sim 0.2-0.5$ dex greater than that of the stellar halo. This suggest that had they not been accreted, the primary progenitors of stellar halos would have evolved to resemble typical nearby dwarf irregulars.
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