Tracing galaxy formation with stellar halos. I. Methods

If the favored hierarchical cosmological model is correct, then the Milky Way system should have accreted similar to 100-200 luminous satellite galaxies in the past similar to 12 Gyr. We model this process using a hybrid semianalytic plus N-body approach that distinguishes explicitly between the evolution of light and dark matter in accreted satellites. This distinction is essential to our ability to produce a realistic stellar halo, with mass and density profile much like that of our own Galaxy, and a surviving satellite population that matches the observed number counts and structural parameter distributions of the satellite galaxies of the Milky Way. Our accreted stellar halos have density profiles that typically drop off with radius faster than the dark matter and follow power laws at r greater than or similar to 30 kpc with rho proportional to r(-alpha), alpha similar or equal to 3-4. They are well fit by Hernquist profiles over the full radial range. We find that stellar halos are assembled from the inside out, with the majority of mass (similar to 80%) coming from the similar to 15 most massive accretion events. The satellites that contribute to the stellar halo have median accretion times of similar to 9 Gyr in the past, while surviving satellite systems have median accretion times of similar to 5 Gyr in the past. This implies that stars associated with the inner halo should be quite different chemically from stars in surviving satellites and also from stars in the outer halo or those liberated in recent disruption events. We briefly discuss the expected spatial structure and phase-space structure for halos formed in this manner. Searches for this type of structure offer a direct test of whether cosmology is indeed hierarchical on small scales.