Journal
MONTHLY NOTICES OF THE ROYAL ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY
Volume 493, Issue 3, Pages 3422-3428Publisher
OXFORD UNIV PRESS
DOI: 10.1093/mnras/staa483
Keywords
stars: formation; globular clusters: general; galaxies: evolution; galaxies: formation; galaxies: star clusters: general
Categories
Funding
- International Max Planck Research School for Astronomy and Cosmic Physics at the University of Heidelberg (IMPRS-HD)
- European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme via the ERC Starting Grant MUSTANG [714907]
- German Research Foundation (DFG) [KR4801/1-1]
- ERC under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme via the ERC Consolidator Grant Multi-Pop [646928]
- DFG [Sonderforschungsbereich SFB 881, 138713538]
- BIS National E-infrastructure capital grant [ST/K00042X/1]
- STFC [ST/H008519/1, ST/K00087X/1]
- STFC DiRAC Operations grant [ST/K003267/1]
- Durham University
- Royal Society
- LJMU's Faculty of Engineering and Technology
- STFC [ST/V002635/1, ST/R000832/1, ST/P003400/1, ST/P002447/1, ST/M007073/1, ST/T001348/1, ST/S003916/1, ST/L000636/1, ST/M006948/1, ST/R00689X/1, ST/R001014/1, ST/M006530/1, ST/T00049X/1, ST/V002376/1, ST/R001049/1, ST/V002384/1, ST/M007006/1, ST/T001372/1, ST/P000673/1, ST/T001550/1, ST/R001006/1, ST/M007618/1, ST/T001569/1, ST/K00333X/1, ST/M007065/1, ST/S003762/1, ST/J005673/1, 2000799] Funding Source: UKRI
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Globular clusters (GCs) have been posited, alongside dwarf galaxies, as significant contributors to the field stellar population of the Galactic halo. In order to quantify their contribution, we examine the fraction of halo stars formed in stellar clusters in the suite of 25 present-day Milky Way-mass cosmological zoom simulations from the E-MOSAICS project. We find that a median of 2.3 and 0.3 per cent of the mass in halo field stars formed in clusters and GCs, defined as clusters more massive than 5 x 10(3) and 10(5) M-circle dot, respectively, with the 25-75th percentiles spanning 1.9-3.0 and 0.2-0.5 per cent being caused by differences in the assembly histories of the host galaxies. Under the extreme assumption that no stellar cluster survives to the present day, the mass fractions increase to a median of 5.9 and 1.8 per cent. These small fractions indicate that the disruption of GCs plays a subdominant role in the build-up of the stellar halo. We also determine the contributed halo mass fraction that would present signatures of light-element abundance variations considered to be unique to GCs, and find that clusters and GCs would contribute a median of 1.1 and 0.2 per cent, respectively. We estimate the contributed fraction of GC stars to the Milky Way halo, based on recent surveys, and find upper limits of 2-5 per cent (significantly lower than previous estimates), suggesting that models other than those invoking strong mass loss are required to describe the formation of chemically enriched stellar populations in GCs.
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