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The Saga of M81: Global View of a Massive Stellar Halo in Formation

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The Saga of M81: Global View of a Massive Stellar Halo in Formation Draft version October 27, 2020 Typeset using LATEX twocolumn style in AASTeX63 The Saga of M81: Global View of a Massive Stellar Halo in Formation Adam Smercina ,1, 2 Eric F. Bell ,1 Paul A. Price,3 Colin T. Slater ,2 Richard D'Souza,1, 4 Jeremy Bailin ,5 Roelof S. de Jong ,6 In Sung Jang ,6 Antonela Monachesi ,7, 8 and David Nidever 9, 10 1Department of Astronomy, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA 2Astronomy Department, University of Washington, Box 351580, Seattle, WA 98195-1580, USA 3Department of Astrophysical Sciences, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA 4Vatican Observatory, Specola Vaticana, V-00120, Vatican City State 5Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Alabama, Box 870324, Tuscaloosa, AL 35487-0324, USA 6Leibniz-Institut f¨urAstrophysik Potsdam (AIP), An der Sternwarte 16, 14482 Potsdam, Germany 7Instituto de Investigaci´onMultidisciplinar en Ciencia y Tecnolog´ıa,Universidad de La Serena, Ra´ulBitr´an1305, La Serena, Chile 8Departamento de F´ısica y Astronom´ıa,Universidad de La Serena, Av. Juan Cisternas 1200 N, La Serena, Chile 9Department of Physics, Montana State University, P.O. Box 173840, Bozeman, MT 59717-3840 10National Optical Astronomy Observatory, 950 North Cherry Ave, Tucson, AZ 85719 (Received 31 October, 2019; Revised 31 August, 2020; Accepted 23 October, 2020) Submitted to The Astrophysical Journal ABSTRACT Recent work has shown that Milky Way-mass galaxies display an incredible range of stellar halo properties, yet the origin of this diversity is unclear. The nearby galaxy M81 | currently interacting with M82 and NGC 3077 | sheds unique light on this problem. We present a Subaru Hyper Suprime-Cam survey of the resolved stellar populations around M81, revealing M81's stellar halo in never-before-seen detail. We resolve the halo to unprecedented V -band equivalent surface brightnesses of 33 mag arcsec −2, and produce the first-ever global stellar mass density map for a Milky Way-mass stellar halo outside of the Local Group. Using the minor axis, we confirm M81's halo as one of the 9 lowest mass and metal-poorest known (M? 1:16 10 M , [Fe/H] 1:2) | indicating a relatively ' × ' − quiet prior accretion history. Yet, our global halo census finds that tidally unbound material from 8 M82 and NGC 3077 provides a substantial infusion of metal-rich material (M? 5:4 10 M , [Fe/H] ' × 0.9). We further show that, following the accretion of its massive satellite M82 (and the LMC-like ' − NGC 3077), M81 will host one of the most massive and metal-rich stellar halos in the nearby universe. Thus, the saga of M81: following a passive history, M81's merger with M82 will completely transform its halo from a low-mass, anemic halo rivaling the MW, to a metal-rich behemoth rivaled only by systems such as M31. This dramatic transformation indicates that the observed diversity in stellar halo properties is primarily driven by diversity in the largest mergers these galaxies have experienced. 1. INTRODUCTION isting interstellar reservoirs (Barnes & Hernquist 1991). In the Λ–Cold Dark Matter (ΛCDM) paradigm, As a result of short (.1 Gyr) dynamical and star for- arXiv:1910.14672v2 [astro-ph.GA] 26 Oct 2020 galaxies assemble hierarchically, experiencing frequent mation timescales, the impacts of such mergers quickly mergers with other galaxies (e.g., White & Rees 1978; become well-mixed into the main body of the galaxy, Bullock et al. 2001). These events transform the mor- making it incredibly difficult to infer the properties of phological and kinematic structure of the central galaxy the progenitor merging system long afterwards. (Toomre & Toomre 1972), and funnel cold gas into the Fortunately, mergers also deposit a significant center of the gravitational potential, stimulating the for- amount of loosely-bound stellar material which is re- mation of new generations of stars and enriching the ex- tained within the DM halo | the integral debris of all such events comprises the central galaxy's `stellar halo' (e.g., Spitzer & Shapiro 1972; Bullock & Johnston [email protected] 2005). Stellar halos act as index fossils of past merger 2 Smercina et al. M82 The M81 Group 15 kpc M81 NGC 3077 Figure 1. A deep, wide-field (∼65 kpc × 75 kpc) g-band mosaic of the M81 Group, taken with Subaru HSC. A logarithmic stretch was used. The three primary interacting group members are labeled (M81, M82, and NGC 3077). The visible dark patches around the three galaxies, as well as bright stars, are the result of chip bleeds. The M81 Group is located behind a region of significant galactic cirrus, visible as patches of scattered light. This widespread cirrus impedes the inference of stellar halo properties through integrated light alone. events, encoding the properties of these events long after Deason et al. 2011) and kinematics (e.g., Kafle et al. their impact has been all-but-erased from typical obser- 2012; Gilbert et al. 2018). vational diagnostics within the galaxy. Taking advan- The stellar halos of a number of MW-mass galax- tage of their close proximity, the stellar halos of the ies in the Local Volume (LV) have also been studied in Milky Way (MW) and the Andromeda galaxy (M31) detail. As stellar halos of MW-mass galaxies are both −2 have been studied in exquisite detail, from their stel- large ( 100 kpc) and diffuse (µV > 28 mag arcsec ), ∼ lar populations (e.g., Bell et al. 2008, 2010; Ibata et al. there are several approaches which have been taken: (1) 2014; Gilbert et al. 2014; Williams et al. 2015), to their deep integrated light surveys (e.g., Merritt et al. 2016; structure (e.g., Ibata et al. 2001; Carollo et al. 2010; Watkins et al. 2016), (2) deep `pencil beam' Hubble 3 Space Telescope (HST) surveys which resolve individ- The mergers a galaxy experiences throughout its life are ual stars (e.g., GHOSTS; Radburn-Smith et al. 2011; likely important drivers of its evolution. However, if Monachesi et al. 2016a; Harmsen et al. 2017; Jang et al. stellar halo properties are, indeed, dominated by a sin- 2020), and (3) wide field, ground-based surveys which gle dominant merger, then the other substantial mergers resolve individual stars (e.g., M31, Ibata et al. 2014; a galaxy may have experienced will be effectively hidden M81, Okamoto et al. 2015; Cen A, Crnojevi´cet al. 2016). from us for most systems. A powerful approach to ad- Field-of-view, star{galaxy separation, and sensitivity to dress this observational impairment would be to study in global properties are best optimized respectively with detail the stellar halos of systems which are currently un- integrated light, resolved stellar populations with HST, dergoing significant (i.e. dominant) mergers. This could and ground based observations of resolved stars. Many simultaneously enable the inference of, and comparisons nearby MW-like galaxies reside in regions of the sky between, both their past and future largest mergers, and plagued by significant galactic cirrus. This cirrus emis- how such an event impacts the stellar halo. When com- sion can substantially limit the sensitivity of integrated bined with current measurements for non-merging sys- light to even bulk halo properties (e.g., Watkins et al. tems, such an approach could shed invaluable light on 2016; Harmsen et al. 2017). In these cases, resolved stel- the build-up of stellar halos and the evolution of MW- lar populations are the optimal approach. mass systems. These efforts have revealed that, among the 10 In this paper, we present a Subaru Hyper ∼ best-measured stellar halos of nearby MW-mass galax- Suprime-Cam (HSC) survey of the resolved stellar halo ies, there exists a spread of nearly two orders of magni- populations of the interacting M81 Group (see Fig.1; tude in stellar halo mass, and more than 1 dex in stel- similar to the earlier survey of Okamoto et al. 2015) | lar halo metallicity (e.g., Monachesi et al. 2016a; Harm- the most detailed study of a stellar halo yet obtained sen et al. 2017; Bell et al. 2017, and references therein). outside of the Local Group (LG). The M81 Group is Surprisingly, the MW and M31 sit on opposite ends of a quintessential example of a triple-interacting system this distribution | the MW being the least massive and | hosting vast bridges of tidally stripped H I gas liber- metal-poorest (e.g., Bell et al. 2008), while M31 is the ated from the two interacting satellites, M82 and NGC most massive and metal-rich (e.g., Ibata et al. 2014) | 3077 (Yun et al. 1994; de Blok et al. 2018) | and is the highlighting the enormous diversity in the accretion his- nearest ongoing significant merger (3.6 Mpc; Radburn- tories of MW-mass galaxies. Smith et al. 2011). Using a three-filter, equal-depth ob- Hints of this diversity in stellar halo properties serving strategy, as well as numerous overlapping HST have begun to appear in simulations (e.g., Monachesi calibration fields, we combine the relative advantages et al. 2016b; D'Souza & Bell 2018a; Monachesi et al. of `pencil beam' and ground-based surveys, revealing 2019), with indications that much of this diversity can M81's stellar halo in never-before-seen detail. We use be explained by the slope and scatter in the galaxy stel- this new quantitative insight to show that, in a sin- lar mass{halo mass relation below L∗. Yet, the process gle merer event, M81 will span nearly the entire stel- of stellar halo assembly, and the associated mergers' im- lar halo mass{metallicity relation: transitioning from a pacts on the evolution of the central galaxies, is unclear. low-mass, metal-poor halo, to one of the most massive, The question remains: how are these halos built? metal-rich halos known | rivaled only by the halos of • It is now becoming clear from models that the galaxies such as M31.
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